Stephen Hayes evidently wasn’t paying much attention to Huntsman’s policies:

For several months, Huntsman dabbled in policy—offering a naïve return to non-interventionism overseas [bold mine-DL] and a strong economic plan here at home.

I’ve said more than enough about Huntsman, but this description deserves some comment. There are many ways to describe Huntsman’s foreign policy views, but non-interventionist isn’t one of them. He did oppose the Libyan war, which was encouraging, but his support for an Iranian war cancels out any effect that might have had. He has supported withdrawal from Afghanistan, but still favors continuing the war as a counter-terrorist operation, so he is as much of a non-interventionist as George Will, which is to say that he isn’t one. Huntsman very quickly outlined a vision that had very little in common with what what non-interventionists and conservative realists believe.

Sometimes it seemed as if Huntsman was adopting something like Haass’ “restoration doctrine,” and that is probably the view closest to his, but his emphasis on U.S. hegemony and his absurd hawkishness on Iran should make clear that Huntsman was generally far more conventional in his views than his admirers or detractors would have us believe. Huntsman was never a non-interventionist, and he would be among the first to define such a position as “isolationism.” It’s safe to say that any candidate who says that he “cannot live with a nuclear-armed Iran” cannot be a non-interventionist.

This brings me back to the claim that Paul’s influence on the GOP will be to “create space” for a more mainstream political figure to promote foreign policy restraint and skepticism. Paul is creating the space, but so far no one has taken advantage of this. At a minimum, an advocate for restraint cannot support preventive wars. I’m not sure what foreign policy restraint could mean if it doesn’t mean refusing to start unnecessary wars.