Republicans waiting for Superman

By Frank Moraes 

Look! Out in the right wing echo chamber! It's a tax cut proposal?! It's a birth control ban?! No! It's another appeal to conservatives to seem reasonable without changing a God damned thing!

Yes, the "let's all speak nicely about Latinos": argument from a fantasy land far away, come to reality hoping to obfuscate, distract, and deceive the American people.

Katrina Trinko over at National Review writes, "Huntsman's Problem Wasn't Just That He Was Perceived as a Moderate." That title gives you the wrong impression, however. Really what's she's saying is that Huntsman's policies were mostly to the right of Romney. The problem was that he just seemed too damned reasonable!

Trinko goes on to note that Huntsman didn't run a good campaign, but this is a minor complaint. He could easily run a stellar campaign next time. After all, if he had just stayed in the race, at some point, like all the others, he would have surged ahead in the polls. And given that he actually was a real politician, he might have stayed there.

What Trinko seems to be offering is the idea that if Republicans can just hold their noses and vote for a candidate who doesn't pander to their vile ideal, they might get a really conservative candidate who can win. This all comes down to the argument conservatives have been making since the election: it is the style rather than the substance of their policies that are scaring minority voters away. But no: it's really is the substance.

I'm not one of those who think that the Democrats are home free now. Republicans will continue to win low-turnout elections. But for the majority of voters, their ideas are toxic. And it doesn't matter how much they dress up these ideas. Even in a Superman cape, they just won't fly.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)