Pity Jon Huntsman, the Republican wunderkind, who left the U.S. early in 2009 to burnish his resume as the GOP’s best bet to oust President Obama, and came back two years later to find himself obsolete. Huntsman was, The Weekly Standard’s Andrew Ferguson writes, “The re-thinking man’s candidate,” forged in the days after Obama’s election, when the GOP, battered and bloody following the 2008 blowout, had to reassess its position and see things anew.

In those giddy days, only two things seemed possible: that the entire country had turned to the left (and the GOP had to turn with it); or Obama himself would turn to the center, pre-empt independents, whom he had carried, and form an enduring center-left bond.