"Right before the eyes of those who know better, not to mention all those miles of videotape, the 40^th president has ceased to be a real person when cited by some Republicans. Stripped of his considerable real-life capacity for straight talk, his uncanny knack for zeroing in on exactly the heart of his opponent’s real message, complete with a pithy dispatching of modern liberalism and its practitioners -- the real Ronald Reagan has ceased to exist in the minds of those who lovingly summon his name at election time.  

There’s no other possible reason for former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, incredibly once a Reagan staffer himself, to set himself up for such a public fall with his own presidential announcement speech. Going to elaborate lengths to re-create the 1980 Reagan campaign kickoff against the backdrop of the Statue of Liberty, Huntsman did everything but, apparently, the obvious: go back and read what candidate Reagan actually said while he was standing there.

It took the redoubtable Rush Limbaugh exactly microseconds of air time that day to find an audio of Reagan delivering that very speech. The contrast between Huntsman solemnly preaching his promises of civility towards the incumbent while Reagan dispatched then-incumbent Jimmy Carter with a series of brisk verbal volleys was like night and day. It made the new candidate seem weak, confused and not the smart man his followers insist him to be."

Jeffery Lord at The American Spectator.