Displaying the tone-deafness that doomed his presidential campaign, Jon Huntsman compared the current state of the Republican Party to Communist China. Complaining about the Republican National Committee’s decision to un-invite him from a fundraiser after he called for third party competition, Huntsman told reporters in New York, “This is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script.”

Needless to say, the Communist Chinese can do a lot worse things to you than rescind your invitation to a posh fundraiser. Huntsman later explained he was “waxing philosophical.” It was precisely Huntsman’s tendency to express his extremely mild dissents from the GOP platform in such world historic terms, combined with his not-too-thinly veiled contempt for those to his right, that kept him an also-ran.

Not to be outdone, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wonders if America needs an “Arab spring” because the last vestiges of constitutionally limited government make it so darned hard to get anything done. (Presumably by Arab spring he doesn’t mean the Muslim Brotherhood taking over the government.) In recent years, all Washington has been able to ram through is Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, the Patriot Act, the Iraq war, Sarbanes-Oxley, TARP, the stimulus, Dodd-Frank, and Obamacare. I’m probably missing something. “We can’t be great as long as we remain a vetocracy rather than a democracy,” Friedman concludes.

Beam me up, Scotty.