How come no one likes Jon Huntsman?
I think he’d be a great rival to Obama in the general election.
I don’t get it. Why don’t Republicans like him? Are they priming him for 2016? Is 2012 already a lost race?
Around 2006, we had a running joke about the Democrats’ ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The Republicans, on the other hand, had an image somewhere between the Illuminati and the Wizard of Oz. Somebody was pulling the levers behind a curtain—which, we imagined, gave them the ability to do clever and coordinated things like groom a candidate for 2016. Or to give a guy like McCain a chance to be the nominee in a year the party was going to lose anyway. But that was 2006, before the Tea Party.. Since then, the Republicans have looked less and less in control. The policies currently advocated make Reagan look awfully progressive. The intra-party debate seems to be over whether it is 1950 or 1850.
This is not a good environment for Huntsman. He’s conservative—but he’s not a bomb thrower. His pitch for why we should let him govern consists of more than bare hatred of government. He’s also been willing to work with the Obama administration. So he’s not winning any followers in the mad-as-hell department. When you combine this with the Obama administrations willingness to adopt ideas previously raised by Republicans, Huntsman really doesn’t look like he’s against everything the Obama administration is for.
Huntsman’s other problem is that he’s running in Romney’s shadow. They’re both Mormons in a party dominated by Evangelicals. The handful of people willing to support somebody they (most-likely) consider a more-moderate, non-Christian are are attracted to the higher-profile Romney. Huntsman’s liabilities mirror Romney’s. Huntsman is more principled and more consistent than Romney—but if you’re a moderate Republican looking for somebody to save you from the demagogues, Romney makes a reasonable consensus candidate.
Huntsman’s 2012 chances aren’t 100% gone—but they’re still pretty slim. If he can pull off a strong showing in New Hampshire, he can possibly make Romney look less inevitable. Or of Romney loses in South Carolina and Florida, it might look like we’re headed for a brokered convention—so people might want to back the guy they’d actually like to see elected.
The bottom line is that Huntsman appeals to once-and-future conservatives like me. The things we like about Huntsman are the things we like about Obama. Being the Republican that Progressives like is a tough sell in a Republican Primary.
