For Huntsman, a new low

This is pathetic. Just pathetic. More evidence that no low is too unthinkably low when it comes to "getting right" with 2012's increasingly isolated pseudoconservatives.

According to RealClearPolitics' Erin McPike, "the two living Republicans" the congenitally moderate Jon Huntsman says he "most admires" are -- ready ? -- Paul Ryan and Mike Huckabee. One, an exuberant vendor of fiscal fallacies and other intensely unpleasant ideological mumbo-jumbo; the other, a bottom-feeding exploiter of hayseed ignorance and religious bigotry. And those are the positive profiles.

Mr. Ambassador, by selling your soul now you're only creating your own demons for 2016; they'll come back to haunt you at the most inopportune time -- that is, when the GOP has rendered the likes of Ryan-Huckabee scurrility to the flaky, untouchable margins of third-party Tea Partyism. I simply cannot see how the GOP survives its imminent thrashing in any other way: a massive, ideological cleansing is in the cards, just as surely as the GOP will lose the House next year, as well as all hopes for the Senate and White House. By 2016 even the patina of 'RyanCare' and contractual Fox propaganda will carry a political toxicity of near lethal dosage. A fresh, uncontaminated, authentic conservatism will be in demand, from which you, Mr. Ambassador, are presently removing yourself.

Doubtless I go too far, but I do so only to emphasize the rather inescapable logic of the GOP's coming moderation. For now, the party is trapped in a concentrically tightening ideology of self-righteous suicide, but at some pragamtic point it's bound to rediscover the liberating grandeur of just plain self-survival.

As a rather comic aside, here's irrefutable evidence that at any rate Mr. Huntsman hasn't yet the knack for appealing to the right's primary base of the infinitely slackjawed. "You cannot extrapolate our current spending levels on current assumptions that underlie Medicare and Social Security," says Huntsman, "and expect to be in a good place for future generations."

Dear Jon, you lost them on the third word.

Comments

[janicket]

The one fly in your otherwise excellent ointment, Mr. Carpenter, is the terrifying but not impossible possibility that the GOP Congresscritters of the Tea persuasion will actually stampede gleefully over the cliff of not lifting the debt ceiling, plunging the country, indeed the globe, into an economic catastrophe which said Tea-crazies, aided and abetted by a stenographic press, will then blame on Obama and the Democrats.

At which point the Democratic sweep that appears to be building now may well be swept aside by mass hysteria of the sort the current incarnation of the GOP is all too adept at exploiting.

[Dorothy Rissman]

Jon, jon, jon. What an incredible fool he has turned out to be. He has sold his soul, and now they own him. He will never be allowed to step back from the extreme repug philosophy.

I am personally very happy that he is doing this. If he had waited until 2016, he coulda been a winnar. Just like Brando.

[Elisabeth]

Huntsman's problem has been and will be that he served for, you know, the black dude in the White House. He can run as far to the Right as he wants but he'll never escape that fact. And now he looks lame on top of it.

[GT]

Dr. Carpenter,

For the sake of this nation and our politics I can only pray that you are correct about the House elections next year and about the eventual cleansing of the psychotic GOP.

This "no enemies to the right" madness has to end somewhere...correct?

[Margaret Wells]

re the Huntsman tape: this is one smart guy. He describes a plan which is so similar to Obamacare it is scary. I am pleased that the Republicans are rejecting him, because like the Obama team has said, he could be a real threat.

[Bobfr]

I can only imagine the genuine empathetic sadness that our dear President Obama feels for former Huntsman.

All he had to do was remain entirely silent until ~ Jan 2015, and he could have been the salvation of a genuine conservative party.

Instead he has documented himself as a FOOL, and done so in a way that he will NEVER escape.

[Anne Johnson]

Well I've said it before and I'll say it again: I certainly hope you are right in your predictions. I often wonder what is going on when the republicans seeing how potentially toxic Ryan-nocare is for them politically seem to be doubling down instead of moderating their position. In fact after 2008, everyone thought that the republican party was too extreme and seeing the political price they paid, would calm down a little and be more moderate. But the opposite happened they became even more extreme and ended up winning control of the house and governorships throughout the country. I hear reports of "buyer's remorse" over these recent elections and many of these governors have become quite unpopular in a short period of time. But it's a long time between now and 2012 and these right wing elected officials may be less concerned about their popularity and reelection prospects than they are about pushing through their radical agenda in short order. 2012 may go well for the democrats and we may have a return to sanity and responsible governing in 2013, but the question remains, how much damage will the republicans do in the meantime?

[Peter G]

The health of the two party system in the US demands a Republican move back to rationality but I think the shift is more likely to be gradual rather than seismic. The tea party will absorb all the flakes, leaving the GOP to rebuild and internecine warfare in the tea party will cause it to disarticulate. The tea partiers will slowly drift back to the GOP where they will have to moderate their views, at least publicly, as a price for getting back in the tent. They'll still be there but they won't be driving the bus.