The Candidate Huntsman Could Have Been

Ezra Klein feels that Huntsman "has offered the Republican Party a generic conservative platform minus the partisan swagger":

What [the GOP race] doesn’t have is someone saying, “of course I would accept a deal that cut $10 in spending for every $1 in tax increases. Are you kidding me?” What it doesn’t have is someone noting that Senate Republicans introduced the first bill to cut carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade program, John McCain and Sarah Palin had such a plan in their 2008 platform, and it would be irresponsible for the Republican Party to walk away from that position. What it doesn’t have is someone saying, “you know, the deficit is such a big problem that I would be willing to sign the Simpson-Bowles recommendations, or something close to them, into law.”

Amen. There was an opening here for a breakthrough candidacy. But cowardice killed it.