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The Spectacle Blog
After suggesting that Jon Hunstman, not Newt Gingrich, is the most conservative GOP hopeful electable, Ross Douthat recaps Huntsman’s missteps:
But his salesmanship has been staggeringly inept. Huntsman’s campaign was always destined to be hobbled by the two years he spent as President Obama’s ambassador to China. But he compounded the handicap by introducing himself to the Republican electorate with a series of symbolic jabs at the party’s base.
He picked high-profile fights on two hot-button issues - evolution and global warming - that were completely irrelevant to his candidacy’s rationale. He let his campaign manager define his candidacy as a fight to save the Republican Party from a “bunch of cranks.” And he embraced his identity as the media’s favorite Republican by letting the liberal journalist Jacob Weisberg write a fawning profile for Vogue.
This was political malpractice at its worst. Voters don’t necessarily need to like a candidate to vote for him, but they need to think that he likes them. Imagine a contender for the Democratic nomination introducing himself to liberal voters by attacking Planned Parenthood, distancing himself from “left-wing nutjobs” and giving a series of interviews on Fox News, and you have the flavor of how Huntsman’s opening act was perceived on the right. The substance mattered less than the symbolism, which screamed: I want your vote, but I don’t particularly care to be associated with your stupidities.
In general Huntsman’s campaign has been tailored to the media and policy experts, not to primary voters. Just this week, Huntsman unveiled a bold, conservative, and realistic plan for unwinding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As with others of Huntsman’s attempts to present an exciting platform, somehow the call to end Feddie and Frannie went virtually unnoticed — despite the fact that the two GSEs are among the biggest bogeymen for conservatives.
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More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/11/30/huntsman-a-missed-opportunity
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martin j smith| 11.30.11 @ 4:48PM
You are beyond joking. Huntsman does not know what party he belongs in or wants to be in.
JeffC| 11.30.11 @ 4:57PM
perhaps its the messenger that is being ignored ...
JeffC| 11.30.11 @ 5:01PM
"the two GSEs are among the biggest bogeymen for conservatives"
from Wikipedia:
"A bogeyman (also spelled bogieman, boogeyman or boogieman) is an amorphous imaginary being used by adults to frighten children into behaving."
Maybe if you didn't treat conservatives as children we might listen to your opinion about Huntsman ...
calling a serious issue a bogeyman is how liberals try to denigrate conservatives. Are you a liberal ?
sure feels like it ...
Joseph Lawler| 11.30.11 @ 6:29PM
JeffC --
Thanks. Look up any of my writings on the GSEs and then get back to me.
Meh| 11.30.11 @ 5:42PM
Yep.
To one extreme, he could be considered an Obama/dem plant.
Wayne| 11.30.11 @ 7:04PM
What opportunity did he miss? He was out of the country when the Tea Party took off. He was just obviously out of touch. He was never a factor.
Narf| 11.30.11 @ 7:46PM
He was never a factor, but it was entirely because of unforced errors. He seemed like he was trying to provoke arguments. His advisors have done him the same kind of disservice that Cain's advisors have done for Cain, but the candidate takes the blame for the advisors he chooses to surround himself with. This is entirely Huntsman's fault.
Having said that ... look at his record, look at his tax reform plan, his economic plan, his plan for dismantling Fannie and Freddie, and you'll find a lot of good conservative plans there. Erickson at redstate commented at one point that Hunstman had the best and most conservative economic plan on the table, and he said this reluctantly because Erickson absolutely despises Huntsman.
The point is that Huntsman would be a far better President than either Mitt or Newt. If there was enough of a void for Newt of all people to move into the lead, then Huntsman could possibly have gotten there instead if he hadn't been such an incompetent campaigner.
Jane| 11.30.11 @ 8:29PM
Huntsman is one gorgeous hunk of guy. He's my candidate. A Huntsman-Cain or Huntsman-Rand Paul ticket would be fabulous. Michele Bachmann is very pretty and I admire her courage taking on the boys but I can't vote for a woman in any political office.
SpiralArchitect| 12.1.11 @ 3:29PM
A fine display of the American rational for voting.
Kate| 11.30.11 @ 11:25PM
It is time for conservatives and other Republicans to unite behind Huntsman, the most electable candidate and a conservative. Those who call him a RINO are uninformed. Huntsman has offered a bold tax and economic plan at a time when nothing short of boldness is required, a conservative plan to reform "too big to fail" banks, and a strategic, modern and economic-driven (but not isolationist) foreign policy. He supports the Ryan plan and the Keystone pipeline project. Huntsman is pro-life and never flipflopped on that issue. He signed school voucher legislation as Utah's governor. Huntsman has core principles and political courage in spades, unlike Romney. He is no RINO. Yes, he holds moderate views on civil unions and climate change. But he has stated in interviews that he would not advocate unilateral action on climate change and would not pursue cap and trade if elected because fixing the economy is the top priority. It should be noted that Romney and Gingrich have been all over the map on these issues.
Huntsman is experienced in foreign and domestic policy and has a deep understanding of Asia, the region that will be most important to U.S. economic and security interests in the coming years. It is beyond me why my fellow conservatives have ignored or rejected Huntsman in favor of clearly less-qualified and/or unelectable candidates such as Cain, Perry and Gingrich. We owe it to our party and, most of all, our country to nominate our best-qualified candidate, especially in a year in which the incumbent president is very weak. Huntsman is the best and brightest GOP candidate in the field. I find him to be smart, likeable and impressive. We can (1) take our chances with Romney (former governor of my state - he will not get my vote this time) and hope for the best; (2) gamble on the toxic, undisciplined and hypocritical Gingrich, who very likely would lose to Obama; or (3) support Huntsman, whom I believe has the potential to be Reaganesque and accomplish big things, esp. in the economic/tax arena.
I agree that Huntsman's campaign made some early missteps and should have reached out to the conservative GOP base more than they did. But it is time to forgive the campaign's early mistakes. If people are willing to forgive Romney's and Gingrich's serial flipflops, Romneycare, and Gingrich's many personal and political failings, then why not forgive Huntsman's poor initial salesmanship of his own candidacy (a far less egregious thing than the other candidates' issues)?
Criticism of Huntsman's service as ambassador to China under President Obama is wrong. It is often said that partisan politics should stop at the water's edge. Huntsman's willingness to serve a new and inexperienced president in a vital overseas post to which he brought some unique qualifications (language ability and extensive prior experience working in Asia) was patriotic and speaks well of his ability to reach across the aisle at times and govern effectively as president. Recall that Senator Judd Gregg, a mainly conservative Republican, was nominated to be Obama's Secretary of Commerce, a cabinet position with domestic policy responsibilities. The nomination was later withdrawn, but does Gregg's initial willingness to be nominated by Obama nullify his conservative record? Of course not. Nor does Huntsman's service in China nullify his conservative record as Utah's governor.
Let's not throw away the 2012 election (by nominating either a Republican who loses to Obama or a non-conservative who actually wins). I urge conservatives, Mr. Lawler and American Spectator to give Huntsman a seond serious look. He is head and shoulders above the rest of the candidates.
Occam's Tool| 12.1.11 @ 2:27AM
Huntsman should suffer fools more gladly. Reagan did.
Andrew| 12.4.11 @ 1:21AM
From the standpoint of selecting the candidate best suited to go up against Obama in the general election, Huntsman seems like the best bet. While the Republican base wrangles with itself over its desire to choose an ideologically "pure" member of the club to stand as the nominee, the fact of the matter is that the people who really count when it comes to actually winning the election in November - centrists - are generally less-than-enthused by what they've seen going on in the GOP thus far. Speaking as one such person, who voted for Obama in 2008, who has always voted a split ticket, who seriously considered McCain until Palin happened and who would be more than willing to consider voting for a Republican presidential candidate again, I can say that the primary race has, indeed, seemed like a ridiculous sideshow. Newt is merely the latest in the long line of ephemeral poll-leaders; he's far too much of an obnoxious, egotistical, overconfident, self-important ass to last long. (Although I look forward to his implosion; given his personality, it ought to come about in spectacular fashion.) Santorum might get a late bump, but he's probably too extreme even for the decidedly right-of-center GOP primary crowd. When they walk into the polling booth, I suspect most GOP primary voters will swallow their misgivings and vote for Romney, and we'll have ourselves a matchup between Obama and the rather pasty, seemingly too-perfect former Governor of Massachusetts with his uncertain stances on all sorts of issues. Being a centrist, I actually want the GOP to move back to the left, to go back to a party more like it was in the time of, say, Bush 41, or even Ford (object of hatred and vitriol that that would surely make me among most of the base). Hence, I don't see Romney's time in MA, and the policy positions he held there, as bad at all - in fact I find many of them rather attractive. The trouble I'm having - one shared with the anti-Romney crowd, albeit for the exact opposite reason - is that I can't know what to expect from a President Romney. Politicians that refuse to stand up for what they truly believe in, choosing instead to bend like reeds in the wind simply to get elected, disgust me - they're followers, not leaders. And if they do recover their backbone and return to their supposed principles once in office, then they're liars. (As you might have guessed, I get excited about relatively few politicians.) I hate feeling as though I'm being pandered to. Obama is surely guilty of this, too, yet at least from where I'm standing, his reversals seem less cowardly and egregious. If the economy improves over the next several months, my money is on four more years for Obama.
I don't delude myself that Huntsman stands any real chance of winning the nomination, bar some sort of miracle in NH. Yet he strikes me as the one GOP candidate who's actually stood up for many of his views, even when they may not have been the most popular, because he genuinely believes they are the right stances to take. The same could be said about Santorum, perhaps, but crazy and sincere is still crazy, and Huntsman is definitely sane. His policy proposals make me feel like he thinks I'm an adult, not some drooling stooge with a 7th-grade equivalent education who doesn't know the meaning of the word "nuance," let alone appreciate it when it's employed. And the stances he has taken, as more and more commentators have been noting of late, are not really all that liberal. Yet at the same time, he's close enough to the center that, in the less-polarized general campaign, even many center-left voters would stop and really think hard about him were he to be the nominee. As it is, they, and many other moderates, will probably shrug and sigh come November as they cast another ballot for Obama. It won't be a vote for the candidate they favor so much as for the one they disfavor the least; the "hope" message has definitely lost its sheen. What a crummy, disheartening way of having an election.
A Huntsman-Obama competition, on the other hand, would have the virtue of being a truly engaging, stimulating race, presenting radically different, yet cogent and well-argued views about America, its place in the world, and how it ought to be governed. Imagine that - a genuine, reasonable, intelligent conservative capable of broad-based electoral appeal up against a genuine, reasonable, intelligent liberal also capable of broad-based electoral appeal (all of which Obama is, no matter how many on the right may demonize him). That's an election I could get excited about getting to vote in.
Due to the incompetence of our own feuding politicians, Ohioans like myself won't get to vote in a congressional or presidential primary until June...by which time I expect the nomination to have been fully decided. Yet I'm hoping that Huntsman will keep campaigning long enough to have his name printed on the ballot forms - as of now, I'd vote for him, even if it were worthless.