Earlier this month, an aide to Jon Huntsman promised that his candidate would resist the angry tone and name-calling of modern political campaigns. “I think he’ll make it clear where he disagrees when it comes to policy and where he wants to take this country, but for him this is a campaign based on substance and not names.”

It was an odd claim—a so-called velvet hammer strategy that seemed naïve or unworkable, or both. And it was. In an article published six days later, Huntsman’s campaign manager, John Weaver, abandoned the high road strategy and suggested Republicans are “a bunch of cranks.” (Weaver, who worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the early part of the Bush administration, made his attack out of concern for the future of “our party.”)