Jon Huntsman is dropping out of the race and endorsing Mitt Romney. I’m glad he won’t have a chance to run against the man who made him our ambassador to China. On the other hand, it’s kind of sad that the Republican voters can’t recognize the only talent they have in the field. The Republican Party and the country would be better off in the hands of Huntsman than the any of the other clown-candidates. You can tell that by life experience, political success, temperament, speeches, media performances, and any other metric you might want to employ. Huntsman isn’t a clown. He adopted some clownish ideas, like term limits for Congress, in an effort to appeal to the GOP base, but he’d probably be more like Poppy and Nixon than like Dubya or Romney or Gingrich.
In any case, he’s out of the race now. He won’t be the veep-nominee, so he’s angling for a position in Romney’s cabinet, and he’ll probably get one. Maybe as Secretary of State.
The field is a little smaller now, but not in a way that is likely to hurt Romney too much.
Secretary of State in a Romney administration? I don’t think so. The Right is going to have Romney by the nuts so hard he won’t have room to maneuver. He doesn’t have the stature of a Powell and the GOP is much more right wing than 2000. Plus, he worked for Obama. Huntsman fucked up. He should have stayed in bed this year.
he never was the likely nominee. I always felt he entered now to get his name known so he can run in 2016.
the only sane one of the lot.
lotsa peeps say Obama will dump Biden for Hillary…
wonder what would happen if Obama chose Huntsman as VP.
I kind of don’t think that’s going to happen. Obama and Biden seem kind of close. I would be a bit perturbed if it did.
>so he’s angling for a position in Romney’s cabinet, and he’ll probably get one.
does this mean you think there WILL be a Romney cabinet?
No. Unless world events and the economy conspire against the president, he will be reelected.
It’s an odd time to quit the race, especially given his decent showing in NH and his quote that 3rd place is “a ticket to ride.” Obviously someone found a way to persuade him to drop out, and since it only helps Romney, it would probably be him, or the establishment GOP.
It’s a funny thing though. I’d come to the conclusion that Huntsman really wants to be president, and that he’ll make his real run in ‘016. That was the simplest explanation I could come up with for his running this time, when his presence mainly served to undermine support for Romney: he doesn’t want Romney to win.
Well. Maybe he sees a Romney nomination as past inevitable now and is simply cutting his losses. I suppose he may be entertaining job offers in a Romney administration, but for that to be attractive, he’d have to believe that Romney will have an administration, and I don’t think anybody believes that’s going to happen. Not yet, anyway.
I’ll miss him in the debates. Now all we have is Ron Paul to make the Fox commentators’ heads explode.
So much for my pet theory that Huntsman was in the race to be Romney’s bete noire. Then again, maybe he figured Gingrich was filling that niche just fine.
He might not be a clown, but he sure is a pussy. He’s maybe one of the wussiest candidates I’ve ever seen.
First, like a coward, he looked at the potential tax-hiking or service-cutting abyss that was being a domestic governor in 2009 and got antsy. Then, when the President offered to destroy his candidacy in 2012 for him before it even had a chance to take off, he jumped at the chance and left the country. Then he came back and tried to run anyway. I hope that little bit of resume polishing in Beijing for 18 months was worth it for him, because he’s not going to be adding much more to it these next four years. He’s a media denizen now, like McCain or Lieberman. And the Sunday morning show is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
ETA: I read somewhere today, that Romney can still count on what 42% of the country to vote form him, but funny enough, the internals on the polls show that really Romney core support are from people who just wants to get rid of Obama and his actual “just for Romney” is lower than the anti-Obama vote.
Flip that with Obama’s internal which show that I think 70…% of Obama voters are voting “for Obama” not just against GOP. So I guess we will see with GOTV which side is more motivated.
whoops forgot the rest of my comment.
So Huntsman gets out therby freeing whatever moderate votes he had to go to Romney.
And Rick Perry stays in to siphon off as many Anti-Mittens votes as possible to keep Santorum/Gingrich’s numbers low enough for Romney to win in the conserv states when he might not have otherwise.
I hate to say it, but the only person who can give whats to to Romney is Paul and as we have seen in all the debates Paul has NOT been bringing it to Romney. Instead he focuses on Newt and the other anti-Mittens instead.
Damn, this is looking like the type of coronation that some imagined for Hilary Clinton before that little known Senator from Illinois came along.
ETA: I read somewhere today, that Romney can still count on what 42% of the country to vote form him, but funny enough, the internals on the polls show that really Romney core support are from people who just wants to get rid of Obama and his actual “just for Romney” is lower than the anti-Obama vote.
Flip that with Obama’s internal which show that I think 70…% of Obama voters are voting “for Obama” not just against GOP. So I guess we will see with GOTV which side is more motivated