Huntsman has dropped out and endorsed Romney. It is tempting to respond to Huntsman’s endorsement the same way that he responded to other Romney endorsements, but I’ll refrain. It makes sense that he would choose to endorse Romney at this point. There was no point in pretending that his campaign was going to have much success in the next few weeks, and there is likewise no reason for him to throw his support behind Gingrich and Santorum. We know he was never going to endorse Ron Paul, and Perry should have dropped out weeks ago, and that left Romney.

On policy, the gap between Huntsman and Romney was not all that large. Huntsman’s foreign policy was in many respects virtually identical to Romney’s, they both leaned heavily on the rhetoric of American exceptionalism-as-hegemonism, and except on Afghanistan and military spending Huntsman ended up presenting himself as more hawkish in the last few months. On domestic policy, Huntsman was typically running to Romney’s right, and he had far more credibility as a conservative than Romney ever could, but this never translated into enthusiasm. Huntsman was like Pawlenty as a candidate that was at his best on paper.

I agree with most of Jim Antle’s “one cheer for Huntsman”:

The unfortunate thing was that Huntsman did have a lot to offer in terms of policy: he had some smart things to say about “too big to fail” and the Washington bailout mentality; he was surprisingly bold on entitlement reform; he had actually accomplished more for pro-lifers and gun owners than some of his ostensibly more conservative rivals; he started to sketch out a needed challenge to the Republican consensus on foreign policy and civil liberties that was more nuanced than Ron Paul’s (even if Huntsman didn’t always follow this challenge to its logical conclusions).

Huntsman’s domestic policy agenda was what I found least objectionable about his candidacy, but it was uniquely ill-suited for a campaign focused on appealing to weak partisans, non-ideological voters, and moderates. Huntsman went into New Hampshire courting independents and moderates, who were unlikely to be impressed by his largely conservative record as governor, and he gave the impression to strong partisans and ideological conservatives that he neither wanted nor needed their support.

I have made my objections to Huntsman’s foreign policy clear, so I won’t rehearse all of them again. I don’t think Huntsman’s criticisms are particularly “nuanced,” but leave that aside. What I will say is that the Republican consensus on foreign policy and civil liberties is entrenched and misguided enough that such “nuanced” challenges do not make a dent in public or elite opinion. The discussion of Ron Paul’s impact on Republican foreign policy has helped show why this is the case. Paul’s critique of U.S. foreign policy has resonated because it is extensive and based in a principled disagreement over the role of the U.S. government overseas. He is striking at some of the core assumptions behind the Republican consensus, but he is also attacking assumptions behind the broader bipartisan consensus about the need for American “leadership.” Huntsman agrees with that bipartisan consensus. Whenever someone says that Huntsman presents a “nuanced” challenge to the Republican consensus view, this means that he shares the consensus view 95% of the time and disagrees with it very rarely. Let’s remember that this is how Huntsman sees the U.S. role in the world:

Our goal as a nation should be to sustain our pre-eminence as a force for good. We are of diminishing value to the world if we are a country in decline.

There isn’t a challenge to the Republican consensus on U.S. hegemony, “nuanced” or otherwise. This is a re-statement of the consensus view. According to Huntsman, the most important thing that needs to be done is to put things in order at home in order to perpetuate U.S. hegemony as a “force for good.” Ron Paul’s message is that U.S. hegemony is unsustainable, incompatible with constitutional government, and detrimental to the United States. Is it any wonder that voters dissatisfied with the last decade of endless war are going to prefer the latter?