Freedom Line Blog

Writing today in Politico, Reagan biographer (and now Newt Gingrich chronicler) Craig Shirley gets to the very heart of the difficulty Mitt Romney faces in trying to persuade a Republican electorate desperate for an epochal shift in a party that they (rightly) perceive to have been insufficiently inattentive to limited government:

The former Bain Capital chief is the elitist heir to Rockefeller and the malapropistic heir to Ford and George H. W. Bush. Watching Ford speak extemporaneously was like watching a drunk cross an icy parking lot — and the same can be said for the exuberantly monosyllabic man from Massachusetts…

No one goes around calling themselves a Nixon Republican or a Ford Republican or a Bush Republican. But plenty now proudly call themselves Goldwater Republicans and Reagan Republicans.

One need not share Shirley’s enthusiasm for Gingrich to recognize the sagacity of his diagnosis of Romney. It’s not that conservatives don’t want a manager. It’s just that they want so much more. At this moment in our history — when all sense of principled restrictions on the power of the federal government seem to be eroding — they want someone to draw a line in the sand. Convincing conservative voters that he’s the man for that job is probably beyond Mitt Romney’s ability. To remain a serious candidate, however, he’ll at least have to convince them that he’s not a closet sympathist for their ideological adversaries within the party.

If you like Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater you’ll love Jon Huntsman’s opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal.  Sounding themes of economic growth, fiscal responsibility, and balanced budgets as the key to a prosperous future Huntsman even borrows the Gipper’s famous “time for choosing” phrase to headline his column.  Heck, the former Republican governor of Utah and ambassador to China even praises Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” budget resolution.

One problem: Jon Huntsman isn’t the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan.  Rather, he’s a slicker, more polished version of John McCain.  In a word, he’s a maverick whose method of policymaking is open to whatever the political consensus of the moment requires.  As I wrote for CFIF this week, Huntsman is attracting the same kind of “progressive” Republicans that flocked to McCain’s failed presidential bids.

For all his red meat economic rhetoric in today’s column, Huntsman can’t hide from his past support for President Barack Obama’s stimulus spending, growth in (state) government, cap-and-trade, and state-run health care.

Back in 2005 as governor, Huntsman gave a summary of his approach to illegal immigration that can be used as a window into how he governs in general: “I want to be a catalyst and report good ideas that will lead to a philosophy. That’s what we need first and foremost.”

Wrong.  In the Age of Obama, conservatives aren’t looking for a presidential candidate that formulates his governing philosophy on the fly.  Think about this: If this is the way Huntsman thinks of his job as an executive, is it too much of a leap to assume that this is the kind of ad hoc philosophizing he’ll look for in judicial nominations?  Haven’t we had enough of judicial activists making up the law as they go along, rewriting the Constitution so that it fits whatever facts are in play?

Yet that is exactly what Huntsman’s “report good ideas that will lead to a philosophy” statement suggests.  We’ve seen the kind of cognitive dissonance that Republicans like John McCain truck in when their policy positions are not tethered to conservative principles.  Huntsman is right in his economic prescriptions, but what conservative isn’t these days?  The real question is whether he’ll be right dealing with future problems that require him to use his first principles, whatever those are.