…by Chris Badeaux over at The New Ledger. It’s impossible to properly excerpt, so I’ll just give the first two paragraphs and assure you that the rest of them live up to the promise found therein:
It is safe to say that were there a direct correlation between Jon Huntsman’s standing among national Republican voters (or his chance at winning the Presidency) and the words expended on his behalf by dreamy-eyed middle-aged newspaper columnists who would sooner eat their mothers’ corpses raw than vote for a Republican, then even the good citizens of Utah would have forgotten by now that the man was ever their governor. Instead, we are treated to one round after another of Huntsman announcing that he has one of the most incompetent campaign teams assembled since McCain08.
That former Governor and former Ambassador (but not former heir) Huntsman has no chance at the Presidency is for some reason stated less openly than soon-to-be-former-Congressman Ron Paul’s identical chance for the same office. There may be a dozen good reasons for this, ranging from Huntsman’s superior hair, his apparently absent tendency to suggest that Israel actually controls American foreign policy, his better taste in hair styling products, his superior looks, his better choice in barbers, his more nuanced speech, or any other aspect of his personal grooming more in line with that of a male model than a homeless fellow found wandering under a bridge, muttering to himself about the gold standard. But while his superior looks and lesser air of absolute nuttiness undoubtedly help hide his absolute lack of a chance of getting a single electoral vote, let alone the Republican nomination for the Presidency, the better explanation lies in the fading memories of the Baby Boomers as they enter their collective Alzheimer’s phase, and torture our country with memories of a world that never was.
Chris will forgive me for that, I’m sure.
Moe Lane
PS: The title is never explained, by the way: and while I know what he’s referring to I am going to be cruel and tell you to just look it up.
PPS: Jon Huntsman should run as a Democrat – and that’s not really meant to be mean of me; as a Democrat he’d be a goram paragon. He’d certainly be better than the front-runner that the Democrats are planning to run at the moment…
Oooh! A name-pun over a two-deep cultural reference!
I’m gonna have to bookmark this Badeaux guy.
Regards,
Ric
I am calling for sacrifice from the rich.
The very rich Jon Huntsman for the good of the nation should give up on pretending to be a Republican candidate for President.
The Badaeux column is brilliant for many reasons beyond the tweaking of Jon H. though. As a counterpart to Walter Russell Mead’s recent entry, it’s an almost wistful epitaph for the folly of the McNamara/Cronkite/BigSolution generation. Yeah, that model’s been broken and the proggies never learned that.
Someone send them the memo, please.
Gosh, that had to leave a mark.
I’ll have to bookmark that guy, too. Great link, Moe.