It’s a long shot, but what if the Republican Party someway, somehow decides that an ideological mosh pit is not the best strategy for recapturing the White House?
What if the recent (2016 presidential candidate) straw-poll win by Ted Cruz in the Maine Republican Liberty Caucus (where Rand Paul and Michelle Bachmann were runners-up and Chris Christie didn’t make the top 10) is more of an echo than a salvo? What if Reince Priebus has an epiphany and decides that a majority of voters just won’t identify with a Republican side show winner in 2016?
The timing might be more than fortuitous for those national political ads in major media we’ve been seeing recently. The bipartisan ones that ask where America is going and answer that only a shared vision of how to do it will get us there. The group behind it is “No Labels.” The pitch: “A Shared Vision for A STRONGER AMERICA.” It’s honorary national co-chairmen: Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, and Jon Huntsman, the former Republican governor of Utah.
Something else about Huntsman. The Mandarin-speaking, former ambassador to China was a candidate for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. He distinguished himself as a relative moderate amid a gaggle of unelectable pretenders and fringe right-wingers.
By all indications, he still a player. Still a worldly, well-spoken, media-savvy sort. And still a Republican who hasn’t outsourced his ideology to the lowest common denominator and wouldn’t need to reference Monica Lewinsky in a presidential campaign.