I was an avid watcher of Jon Huntsman’s campaign, not because he embodied current trends in the conservative movement, but because he seemed to think that he could bridge the feverish zeitgeist on the right to a more tempered era in GOP politics.<\/p>\n
It was a tough slog and Mr. Huntsman’s concession speech today was no exception.<\/p>\n
Speaking with reporters, the former Utah governor — and former Obama administration official — seemed to embrace the right’s claim that Barack Obama is essentially an aberrational president, one who has drifted outside the political mainstream.<\/p>\n
He argued that Mr. Obama had pursued a kind of \u201cclass warfare for political gain” and insisted that “this is the most important election of our lifetime.”<\/p>\n
That’s pretty standard fare for Republicans, though as I’ve argued here before, I think it’s hard to support that kind of rhetoric with facts.<\/p>\n
This administration is, obviously, more liberal than most in the GOP would prefer and has pursued policies — the Federal stimulus, the healthcare bill, Wall Street reform — that Republicans want to roll back.<\/p>\n
But Mr. Obama has also embraced a fair number Republican ideas, borrowing heavily from Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare plan, for example, and initially supporting a cap-and-trade carbon program fostered by the GOP.<\/p>\n
He also named a number of top Republican and conservative figures, including Mr. Huntsman, to key posts in his cabinet and in the ranks of his administration.<\/p>\n
Mr. Obama’s Army Secretary is our former Republican congressman, John McHugh.\u00a0 That hardly smacks of pull-up-the drawbridges partisanship.<\/p>\n
Further muddling Mr. Huntsman’s claim — that Mr. Obama is guilty of “corrosive” divisiveness — is the menu of ideas that he himself offered during today’s concession speech.<\/p>\n
Mr. Huntsman actually pushed for policies that are, by most political metrics, considerably to the left of Mr. Obama’s.<\/p>\n
He called for “financial reforms that would break up too big to fail banks” and said that he would “continue fighting to bring home our brave men and women from Afghanistan and stop nation building overseas…”<\/p>\n
Mr. Obama’s many critics on the left would be amazed and overjoyed if the White House embraced those policies.<\/p>\n
(And one can only imagine the outrage that would erupt among conservatives.\u00a0 Cries of<\/p>\n
As we stumble toward the general election, I suspect that Mitt Romney will face a similar problem to the one that stymied Jon Huntsman.\u00a0 Call it the moderate’s dilemma.<\/p>\n
He will have to find ways to embrace the right’s fear and anger toward Mr. Obama.\u00a0 That’s key to turning out the GOP’s base.<\/p>\n
But Mr. Romney will have to connect with those passions without abandoning the nuanced ideas, pragmatic compromises, and bipartisan policy positions that have defined his career.<\/p>\n
Pulling off this bit of political triangulation may be the key to the 2012 campaign.<\/p>\n
POSTSCRIPT:\u00a0 Am I the only one who hates the phoney “humble pie” photographs that news organizations so often use to illustrate these political concession stories?<\/p>\n
Daily Beast, Politico, and the Washington Post all chose images that made Mr. Huntsman look sort of flogged, defeated — at the very least downcast.<\/p>\n
Watch the video, however, and that portrayal is just malarkey.\u00a0 Mr. Huntsman was upbeat and casual and even appeared to have a sense of humor about the end of his long-shot campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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