Dr. Drake: The quote in the OP was written in twitter; terseness is a given.
Huntsman would help the party tack towards the center after the primary is over. Or that’s what I was thinking/nonthinking anyway. Reading your post, I’m having my doubts. I know! Huntsman could be Trump’s VP! In 2020!
Bachmann/Perry could arguably use an old Washington hand in the VP slot. But Huntsman is not that.
I’ll amplify my other point though. Moderate Republicans had their vote split umpteen ways in 1980 (Anderson, Bush, Howard Baker, Bob Dole (on the conservative side admittedly), Lowell Weiker before the primaries started). Reagan had the far right almost entirely to himself. Could the polarities reverse? Might a plurality of Republicans embrace science and professionalism by 2016? Anyway if the Tea Party gets stronger, Huntsman won’t win. If they fade away, he will be well positioned. So he has little to lose in this niche.
Watching him on This Week (ABC) right now. He’s very articulate. He’s saying some good things. He’s sort of weaseling out of his raising his hand during the debate about the 10-1 spending cuts to tax increases. It will be interesting to see how he does going forward.
Thomas Lane of TPM thinks Huntsman is dogwhistling to donors. Coming off of shrinking stimulus and threats of default, the economy has perhaps 1 in 3 chance of recession. And if the economy tanks, a plausible Republican candidate can win. But it’s a little late for Paul Ryan to pull together the organization. Huntsman’s publicity stunts tell potential donors: we can win in 2012 but we need an electable candidate.
I say he will need a cartload of cash if he’s to overcome the lunatic majority of the GOP base. But he may gain that. At the end of the day though, if a Republican congress votes to replace Medicare with a partial-voucher system and ignore adverse selection in insurance markets, I can’t see Huntsman vetoing that bill. Realistically, he does not deserve the support of the professional class.
Pew is a solid organization, but I would caution against accepting any single poll about beliefs. For one thing the difference between Mormons (22% accepting) and Evangelicals (24% accepting) is probably within margin of error.
And other polls have come up with different results. Here’s a National Center for Science Education survey, e.g. although it’s much older, from 1998. The percentages in that survey are very different from Pew (probably a function of different question wording) and the breakdown of denomination shows no clear pattern.
Hunstman has said he would serve as a VP to Bachmann, saying it’s the same as serving in the Obama administration. I’d say that the difference is that he never actively tried to get Obama elected, whereas if he ran with Bachmann or someone else with very divergent viewpoints, that’s more of a compromise of one’s principles.
By all accounts, Jon Huntsman “was” a faithful, upstanding, full-fledged, active Mormon all during his adult life (he served a Mormon mission to Taiwan, which is where he learned the Chinese language, helping set himself up nicely in later life for the US Ambassador position) and so when he recently tried to distance himself from the LDS Church, it caused a LOT of Utahns who had previously supported him, both Mormon and Non-Mormon, to roll their eyes at the particular timing of his little announcement…
(When Huntsman was Governor of Utah, he was extremely popular, with both Republicans and Democrats, Mormons and Non Mormons alike. It’s hard to understand how polarizing the LDS Church is here in Utah, and the incredible influence it plays with every aspect of state politics.)
What? Why shouldn’t they take a look at Huntsman? It’s early days yet for this election. Even if he’s not ultimately a viable candidate, the others should be tested by their response to him. Either way, media attention is supposed to be part of that process. Covering Huntsman is part of covering the Republican nomination even if he’s not to be the nominee.
There’s an odd undercurrent in this thread that a candidate not only is, but *should *be, selected by the media instead of the voters, and that the qualifications for the office are based on the amount of prior media coverage. Where the frack did that come from?
A terrible 2012 move, but perhaps a brilliant 2016 move. The GOP seems hell-bent on nominating someone batshit crazy in 2012. If I’m Huntsman, I realize that I can’t get this nomination. But you let the far righties get their boy (or girl) nominated and their ass handed to them by Obama, then those Republicans with brains (assuming there are enough) will realize the nation isn’t quite that far right and want to nominate someone sane in 2016.