Jon Huntsman’s record and platform are conservative, but his words and temperament don’t match the current conservative style. The liberal mainstream media’s embrace of Huntsman and the Republican base’s dismissal of him testify to the supremacy of identity politics across the political spectrum.
Huntsman seems to have decided early on to run as a moderate, which earned him the adoration of the press. Type “reasonable Republican” into Google, and the first page of results turns up praise of Huntsman by the mainstream media. The top hit is a Washington Post column condemning “religious warriors and anti-government agitators,” and not far down is a glowing piece in the Daily Beast by a co-founder of the organization “No Labels” (motto: “Not Left, Not Right, Forward”) extolling Huntsman as “a moderate with centrist appeal.”
