In “Huntsman’s Real Problem (Townhall, January 8, 2012), Carol Platt Liebau fingers a key weakness of GOP prez hopeful Jon Huntsman:
His economic record is actually pretty conservative. But when your campaign’s opening shot is a snarky tweet about your “crazy” belief in evolution and global warming, you’re displaying the same kind of smug, elitist (and ignorant) contempt for conservatives and Republicans that usually emanates from, say, people obsessed with the status of American contraception. When you suggest, again, that the party you’re hoping to represent is currently not entirely “sane” (and then have to clarify the remark), you’ve definitely got a problem.
Projecting an air of moral superiority and indulging in the occasional bit of sanctimonious hectoring from the debate platform likewise isn’t going to win you a lot of hearts and minds.
Either Huntsman himself is the worst politician known to man, or he accepted the worst political advice known to man. Why on earth would he think he would benefit from repeatedly insulting the people whose support he needs … ?
Hmmm. Why on earth … ?
Because it’s the air he breathes? Because he thought they were too stupid to notice? Because there is no possibility whatever that he could be wrong?
Most politicians inclined to indulge in that “innate superiority” stuff save it until after they are elected. For one thing, their position is strengthened insofar as they got the “stupid” part right about the majority who voted for them.