Huntsman backs away from latest media depiction as a self-hating Republican

Jon Huntsman, through some fault of his own in breaking Ronald Reagan's "11th Commandment," has become the golden boy of liberals who like to tell conservatives how the GOP should operate.

The broken record this campaign from media elites and Democrats is the consensus that the GOP has somehow veered to a radical right, and that conservative icon Ronald Reagan could not win a Republican primary in 2012 (An absurd claim which warrants asking the more appropriate question if the NAFTA-supporting, Don't Ask Don't Tell, end "welfare as we know it" Bill Clinton could win in today's 99 % Democratic Party.) While having previously entertained conversations of third parties and delivering less than kind comments about fellow Republicans, even Huntsman is distancing himself from the latest attempt to portray him as at odds with the majority of the GOP.

During a live interview at the 92nd Street Y Sunday night in New York City, the former Republican presidential candidate was reported by Zeke Miller of BuzzFeed to have taken a "battle axe to his own party, comparing it to China's Communist Party" and "saying later that Ronald Reagan would 'likely not' be able to win the GOP nomination nationally in this political climate."

Huntsman quickly backed away from this depiction Monday morning during an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe, mocking BuzzFeed's name and claiming that his remarks were taken out of context.

"We were talking about all kinds of different things, 'waxing philosophical'. And you get these blogs out there — you know, BottomFeeder, BuzzSaw, Buzzfeed, whatever they are — and they take a sentence out of context and it becomes a headline and pretty soon mainstream newspapers pick up on that," Huntsman said.

“I said, you know, if you’re not on-script and you get knocked out of an event like that – the parties are supposed to be big-tent, you’re supposed to bring in all ideas – and I said, I thought for a moment about what they do in China if you go off-script," Huntsman went on to explain Monday. "The party, they knock you out. We shouldn’t be doing that here, we should be accommodating all voices, I'm a proud Republican. I'm a Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan Republican.”

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