And Huntsman’s “solid record”? Maybe he has one if we’re gauging him by Republican-establishment standards. After all, as Utah’s governor, Huntsman was a spendaholic and global-warming alarmist who was lax on illegal immigration and favored a government mandate that citizens purchase health insurance. Does it get any more mainstream GOP than that? In 2009, Huntsman opined that the problem with Obama’s failed Keynesian stimulus was that it wasn’t big enough — it should have been $1 trillion (gee, I wonder why President Obama figured he’d be a good fit). On foreign policy — a topic on which even the Editors chide Huntsman despite their amazingly generous grading curve — he appears to be a transnational progressive of the Council on Foreign Relations bent who never met a treaty he didn’t like. Much can be said about all of that, but it is not exactly a “solid record” by conservative standards as National Review used to apply them.
This is not to say Governor Huntsman would not be a dramatic improvement over President Obama. As the Club for Growth notes, his irresponsible profligacy on the spending side was mitigated by sensible tax policies. He is clearly a very bright, articulate fellow — and he was overwhelmingly reelected governor of a very conservative state. But how could the beacon of the conservative movement find that he merits serious consideration but Gingrich, Perry, and Bachmann do not? That is absurd.
They all merit serious consideration: those four, as well as Governor Romney, with his significant up- and downsides, and Rick Santorum — who, along with Romney and Huntsman, is judged fit by the Editors to enter the trio to which they would whittle us down. When reliable conservatism and valuable experience are combined, Senator Santorum is as solid as any in the bunch. But given the Editors’ professed belief that the likelihood of beating Obama is such a crucial consideration, how odd that they single out “lack of executive experience” as his downside. Manifestly, Santorum’s credibility barrier is the electoral drubbing he suffered as an incumbent senator. He surely has a case that he can surmount this hurdle: Pennsylvania is a blue state, 2006 was a very bad year for Republicans, many great leaders have lost elections, and the passing years have proved him prescient on the cultural and foreign-policy issues that matter. But while Santorum could still catch a wave, as several of the other candidates have, it is the one-sided loss of his seat, not want of executive experience, that has dogged him.
The endorsement business and its flipside, the disqualification business, are bad ideas for this illustrious institution. That is a point I tried to make before the 2010 midterm elections. There is no avoiding the fact that we live in a practical, tactical world. Personality has its place and electability matters. But National Review has endured as a beacon of our movement for over a half-century because the power of conservative ideas can trump personality and dramatically alter voters’ notions about who is electable. If we lose that conviction — if we convince ourselves that conservative candidates, effectively arguing conservative ideas, cannot persuade a center-right country to reject the most radical Leftist ever to occupy the Oval Office — we are nowhere.
