Newsweek Magaxelrod: marketing the "centrist" GOP candidates that no one's heard of to grease the skids for Obama in 2012

Newsweek Magazine, with its total market capitalization of one dollar, is doing its level best to clear the runway for the 2012 Obama reelection campaign.

To do so, it's following the traditional legacy media game-plan: positioning some obscure GOP "centrist" as a legitimate candidate. Spoiler: he's not.

The moderate Republican [ex-Utah governor Jon Huntsman] had once been considered a rising star in the GOP and a likely 2012 contender, with David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s campaign mastermind, even identifying Huntsman as the only Republican who made him “a wee bit queasy” about the next race...

...But speculation ended abruptly in 2009 when Obama tapped Huntsman for the ambassadorship. National pundits called the appointment a shrewd move by the White House to sideline a potential rival, and then promptly forgot about him...

...sources close to Huntsman (who requested anonymity to speak freely without his permission) say that during his December trip to the U.S., he met with several former political advisers in Washington and Salt Lake City to discuss a potential campaign. “I’m not saying he’s running,” says one supporter who has worked with him in the past. “But we’re a fire squad; if he says the word, we can get things going fast.” What’s more, Huntsman tells NEWSWEEK that when he accepted the ambassadorial appointment, he promised his family they would “come up for air” sometime in 2010 to decide how much longer they would stay in Beijing.

Cubachi accurately observes that the background of Huntsman (Gesundheit!) is distinctly problematic for conservatives.

There’s a reason why the Utah Tea Party booed Huntsman.

I couldn’t care less if he can speak Chinese or was governor of Utah... Huntsman is a progressive republican, and held liberal positions while in office. He is a liberal on social issues, an amnesty shill, and publicly endorsed cap and trade. After Obama’s election to the presidency, Huntsman even called for the republican party to move to the center to attract voters...

A wishy-washy Republican who is indistinguishable on core issues from Democrats can't win in a general election. November's thrashing of Democrats proves that Constitutional conservatism is on the ascendancy. And Huntsman is anything but a true conservative.

No offense to Mike Huckabee fans, but the media engaged in precisely this same form of information warfare in 2008. Huckabee was unelectable in the general election, as many of his prior positions were largely indistinguishable from those of Barack Obama, who was a far stronger campaigner.

Constitutional conservatives could and did take issue with many of Huckabee's prior positions including illegal immigration, global warming, higher taxes, crime and parole. In short, a weak, centrist GOP candidate had no chance against a Democrat without any track record and a distinct proclivity for lying.

If the Republican Party wants to win the presidential election, it had better nominate an articulate conservative who believes, first and foremost, in the United States Constitution. Huntsabee ain't it.


Linked by: Michelle Malkin and Memeorandum. Thanks!