Is a Moderate and Civil Temperament the Kiss of Death in American Politics? — Conservative Jon Huntsman withdraws from the Republican Party’s 2012 Presidential Nominating Process — a Spiritual Twist that Will Go Unnoticed, even on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

© 2012 Peter Free

 

16 January 2012

 

 

A disturbing reflection on the nature of American politics — impulsive wrath as the enemy of listening and consideration

 

Jon Huntsman withdrew from the campaign for the Republican Party’s 2012 Presidential nomination today.  In this withdrawal, there is a subtle spiritual message that will almost certainly be overlooked by a society unaccustomed to actually living the religious principles it holds out as important.

 

Governor/Ambassador Huntsman’s failed campaign is explained by significantly more than its arguably inept political messaging.  His abandonment speaks to the diseased core of the Republican Party’s inability to apply the full tenor of its self-proclaimed religious principles to interpersonal and political interactions.

 

American politics are characteristically more interested in rancor than fact and voluminous wrath than soulful accuracy and civility.

 

Sound like a boring read?  Perhaps.  Skillfully exercised soul is always hard work.  Religious traditions exist to encourage us to pull our heads from our posterior darkness.

 

 

First, the easier proposition — the ironic conflict between fact and appearance

 

Joe Scarborough (host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe) today observed that Huntsman’s departure was an irony.

 

He pointed out that Huntsman had been the most demonstrably conservative member of the entire 2012 Republican presidential field.

 

So what happened in a primary process that was allegedly aimed at selecting a conservative nominee?

 

 

Citation

 

Morning Joe, After gaining 17 percent in NH, Huntsman to leave race, MSNBC (16 January 2012) (video)

 

 

There were flaws with Huntsman’s confusing moderate and conservative message, but the problem went deeper — and it wasn’t with him

 

Morning Joe’s Mike Barnicle and Mika Brzezinski reasonably noted that the Huntsman campaign had gotten off to a bad start by presenting him as a moderate, rather than the conservative he actually is.

 

However, from my perspective, Huntsman’s small government credentials were there for all to see.  One merely would have had to look at his performance as Utah’s twice-elected governor (2004 and 2008).

 

The mainstream media — ever apt at avoiding fact-finding in its preference for trumping up created controversy — was content to present Huntsman as a moderate.

 

That depiction artificially contrasted Huntsman with allegedly more rabid “conservatives” — like Governor Rick Perry, Senator Rick Santorum, and Representative Michele Bachmann.  None of whom needed any help in looking as if there were charmingly and handily toppling themselves from the Cliff of the Lunatic Fringe.

 

Therefore, by combining (a) messaging ineptness on Huntsman’s part with (b) the media’s lack of concern with finding facts, the Huntsman campaign arguably went off the rails.

 

But there is more to the explanation than that, and Newsweek/The Daily Beast editor-in-chief Tina Brown nailed it:

 

He seemed liberal because he was mild, but actually politics is such a carnivorous game, he was never able to show those kind of teeth that you need.

 

 

Fleshing out Tina Brown’s “teeth” comment — a wisely spoken warning from Joe Scarborough

 

Joe Scarborough added that “because” Jon Huntsman had a “moderate temperament . . . like Ronald Reagan . . . he was not seen as being conservative enough . . . not hating enough to be a true conservative.”

 

Scarborough warned that, if the Republican Party carries this hating mindset forward, it will be turning its back on President Reagan, Jeb Bush, and Mitch Daniels.

 

 

In my view, Tina Brown’s “carnivore” explanation mistakenly puts the “blame” on Huntsman, not where it properly belongs, on the soul-diseased core of the Republican Party

 

Tina Brown’s “lack of bite” explanation for Huntsman’s failed candidacy assumes that politics should be the meat-slashing game that it has become.

 

But — from a deeper point of view:

 

Is it Huntsman’s weakness that he is both civil and willing to listen, even while holding onto his small government stance?

 

Or is a large portion of our public’s deafness to soulful civility the flaw?

 

 

Questions that define their own answers

 

Was Ronald Reagan’s unfailing, almost joyous, courteousness a spiritual mistake — or did it define exactly the thing that people so loved about the man?

 

Is hatred the proper political and spiritual way forward?

 

If soulful “mildness” (like Huntsman’s) is a leadership flaw, what does that say about the relationship of spiritual principle to behavior in our supposedly religious American culture?

 

 

The moral? — It was not Jon Hunstman who had the communications problem; it was and is arguably ours

 

Hatred does not define strength and wise principle.

 

A nation that de-evolves into unreasoning hostility’s muck is not one that is going to shine the light that American leadership used to think was our spiritual and political mission in the world.

 

I’m as sorry to see Jon Huntsman go, as I was to see Jeb Bush and Mitch Daniels not enter.