Will Huntsman's Sanity Sell?

The clearest voice for sanity in the GOP race has gone all in for tomorrow’s New Hampshire debate with a foreign-policy speech that actually makes sense. But will sanity sell?

“We still have remnants of a top-heavy, post-cold war infrastructure,” Jon Huntsman says. “It needs to be transformed to reflect the 21st Century world and the growing asymmetric threats we face.”

The former ambassador to China argues that “America once had a foreign policy based on containment--the containment of Communism. Today, we need a foreign policy based on expansion--the expansion of America’s competitiveness and engagement in the world through partnerships and trade agreements...

“Simply advocating more ships, more troops and more weapons is not a viable path forward. We need more agility, more intelligence and more economic engagement with the world.”

As he has before, Huntsman calls for an end to the war in Afghanistan, characterizing it as “cultural arrogance to think we can make tribal leaders into democratic leaders,” and advocates counterterrorism as an alternative to nation-building.

For Huntsman, who has closed his national campaign headquarters in Florida, the New Hampshire primary is make-or-break and tomorrow’s debate may be his Last Hurrah to move up in the race.

He will be facing Mitt Romney’s one-size-fits-all foreign policy and, of course, the master of double talk, who responds with his answer to a tough question on the subject:

“I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions,” says Herman Cain, “and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know? And then I’m going to say how’s that going to create one job?”

That attitude may actually give Huntsman a chance to point out that, if the U.S. were to stop wasting trillions of dollars in the Middle East, there would be money available for all those magic tax cuts to save the economy.

But he will have to speak up quickly before the candidate of the walking dead, Rick Santorum, jumps in to call him a traitor.