Even when Romney wins, there’s something about him . . .

Update: Jon Huntsman edges closer to becoming the Spartacus of Boston. In a remote corner of the dungeons, a Minnesota governor’s eyes are fired wide with hope.

Tonight Huntsman managed to be the least likable guy on a stage that included Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul. No small feat.

The only thing people dislike more than a smug smart-ass is a smug smart-ass worth $16-$71 million.

The insult-comic gimmick may go over great with Vogue correspondents, but with Republican voters it’s probably not enough to pull Pawlenty numbers.

P.S.: What would have been more bizarrely stilted, his Kurt Cobain name-check, a Korn Kidz shout-out? It’s such a weird reference, not (just) because it was totally ill-suited, but because Nirvana isn’t culturally relevant, but isn’t old enough to be classic, either. He might as well have tossed out Cracker or Harvey Danger or Soundgarden.

Huntsman has had a pretty disastrous launch to his campaign–staff turnover, muddled messaging, no poll traction. It’s time for him to go to the media, see if he can’t stir the pot and get this thing going. So who does Team Huntsman hand out access to? Ryan Lizza at the New Yorker? Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review? Oh no.

No, no, no. You don’t understand the Huntsman media strategy. They set the candidate down with Jacob Weisberg. For Vogue.

Let’s hope, for his heirs’ sake, that Gov. Huntsman isn’t going to self-finance this disaster.

Jon Huntsman’s recently-released website points to a bunch of problems with both his campaign and the idea of having an interactive website for any political campaign.

First, take a look at this particular post: Huntsman is pimping an endorsement from Jeb Bush!

. . . Jr.

Isn’t it a little early to be rolling out meaningless endorsements? Isn’t it especially too early to be rolling out endorsements that are designed to be semi-misleading? Jon Huntsman–now with real chocolatey taste and genuine Corinthian Leather!

Now let’s move on to the overall look of the site. Check out the Big Red H up top. On the pale blue background that could be waves gently lapping on a beach in a videogame.

Remind you of the aesthetic of any other political campaign you’ve seen before? I can’t quite place it . . . maybe . . . oh, this one?

If you’re Jon Huntsman and one of your four biggest electoral problems is that primary voters might identify you too closely with Obama, maybe you could wait to unveil the Obama-inspired graphic design elements until after you’ve won the primaries? Or maybe, not at all? Because if anything, the Huntsman “H” is even worse, suggesting as it does that the candidate walks on water. America just elected a god-president. It hasn’t worked out so hot.

Finally, go check out the comments section of the Huntsman item. A fair number of them are anti-Huntsman comments. I’m all for transparency, I suppose, but probably not on the website being paid for by the campaign. The problem isn’t that the website is paying to give a platform to anti-Huntsman trolls–they’re paying to give a platform to actual critiques of the candidate. (Some of the comments are much less flame-like than you’d assume.)

So what’s a campaign website to do? Well, you can curate your comments and turn into a pravda-ish world where thousands of people comment and none of them are ever, in the least bit, negative. (Like some conservative personalities do.) Or you can pay for a platform for people to criticize you. Or–and this might be way, waaayyyyyy out there–you could not have comments on a website run by a political campaign.

Oh I know. You have to have engagement! Social Media! Web 2.0! This is the New World we live in. I suppose.

But if someone on the Huntsman team could explain to me exactly what the added value of the 43 comments on that post are–how many votes they are going to translate to; how many donations–I’d be all ears.

I suspect that like the great majority of interactive value adds in the business world, the actual upside of this for Huntsman is vanishingly small, while the downside–placing negative reader feedback side-by-side with campaign propaganda–is pretty obvious.

From John Heilemann’s great piece  in New York Magazine:

A month later, when he visited New York on a fund-raising swing, I asked who his political heroes were. ­“Reagan was certainly part of that,” Huntsman said, though he paraphrased Dutch’s ringing anti-statism as a commitment to “making sure government never exceeds boundaries and never gets out of control from a cost standpoint.” He also mentioned Nixon: “I mean, here’s a guy who created the EPA.”