I’ve written before about how Jon Huntsman seems to be running for the wrong party’s presidential nomination. Today, the New York Times’ Matt Bai takes the opposite tack in a post in the paper’s Caucus political blog  in which he argues Huntsman has a reasonable chance to win the Republican presidential nod. Bai is the author of a Times magazine profile of the former Utah governor that he promises will be available online next week. It is apparent Huntsman charmed him, and his staff supplied him with what he claims are Republican sources who believe in Huntsman. Suffice it to say, it is likely the portrait of this liberal-leaning Republican in that liberal publication will be a lot more flattering than one about, say, Michele Bachman.

But let’s examine Bai’s premise, which is Huntsman is set up to appeal to a significant segment of the Republican electorate. In order to do that, Bai sets up a straw man he then proceeds to knock down:

Democrats and some commentators tend to see the Republican Party right now as a kind of wild, barren land where nothing thoughtful ever grows. If you start from the premise the Republican grass-roots is made up mostly of stereotypical birther types with pictures of Sarah Palin on their refrigerators and nothing but Bibles on their bookshelves, then sure, Huntsman’s candidacy would seem to be a little laughable.

The turnout in next year’s presidential primary, on the other hand, will probably reach 60 percent. The influence of the most conservative, most motivated activists will almost certainly be diluted.

Bai’s portrait of conservatives is both insulting and false. It assumes “thoughtful” is synonymous with liberal or middle of the road. But if he was merely trying to say the extreme right wing of the GOP won’t decide the race, he’s right. His problem though is the split among Republicans is not between the troglodytes he makes fun of and Huntsman-style “moderates.” It’s between the various conservative factions of the party with liberal-leaning figures like Huntsman whom Bai calls a moderate on the margins.

The victory of John McCain in 2008, which might be construed as evidence of support for a candidate who did not appeal to movement conservatives, shouldn’t encourage Huntsman. McCain’s appeal to Republicans was based on his hawkish foreign policy stances, not his stances on campaign finance reform and global warming. Huntsman not only leans to the left on global warming, he’s planning on running as an anti-war candidate who will advocate a bug out of Afghanistan and a less aggressive “realist” foreign policy than even that of his former boss Barack Obama.

Huntsman remains a liberal’s idea of a Republican. That is why he seems like a reasonable candidate to Bai. He’s a candidate whose campaign is geared to run against his own party and specifically not against Obama, whom he refuses to attack in his speeches. That means even in New Hampshire he can only appeal to basically liberal constituencies. The idea such a person could have a serious chance of winning the nomination of an overwhelmingly conservative party is absurd.