Posted on 01/17/2012 9:50:39 AM PST by truthkeeper
Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman has become the second Republican voted off the island in the 2012 Republican primary campaign (we don't count Tim Pawlenty or Herman Cain, both of whom dropped out before voting began). His decision late Sunday to suspend his campaign is a bit jarring, given that he had insisted after a disappointing third place finish in New Hampshire that he was staying in through South Carolina.
I suspect that what happened is a combination of two things. First, financial reality set in. If you don’t think a candidate is going to win, you’re hard pressed to write him a $2,500 check. At this point, you have to believe that anyone interested in a relatively moderate Republican nominee would be writing checks to Mitt Romney. While Huntsman could have self-funded, he didn’t seem especially eager to do so on such a high-risk endeavor.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Why did Huntsman reach the end? Because he’s nothing politically. He’s a conservitve moderate. Or he’s a moderate conservative. Or he’s a liberal Republican. Or a Republican liberal. Or a maverick. Pick one it doesn’t matter because none of them stirred Republican primary voters. OTOH, he does have attractive daughters.....
He’s finished because he was always the Democratic party’s man in the race. Amazing that such a man didn’t gain any traction with Republicans, ain’t it?
I’ll miss seeing his lovely daughters and wife.
But then, I'm a woman so I see these things a little differently. :-)
He gave up because his old man didn’t want to pump in any more money into the campaign.
Huntsman realized he never got off the starting line. He should have walked off before Iowa.
Overall, I found the article remarkably informative, fair and balanced for a liberal press piece. There was actually one line which was pretty funny:
It’s almost as if Huntsman had been out of the country for two years and had missed the entire Tea Party movement. (Oh, wait . . .)
What a waste of words. He ran out of money and his father wasn’t willing to piddle more away on his fantasy.
There’s an axiom that goes: “no one ever really decides to quit running for President, they just run out of money”.
End of the road? I don’t think he ever got out of the driveway!
there are interesting family ties between the two (I don’t mean the blood-relationship in the 19th century, but association between their families much more recently.
Going back to early 2009, when it looked like Obama was invincible and it was cool to lick the bottom of his shoes, Huntsman (with his eye on 2016) accepted the offer for the Beijing ambassadorship, probably calculating that he could possibly succeed Hillary as SoS (or even Biden as VP) after 2012, and then use that as a springboard to succeed Obama as a liberal Republican.
And so he quit his job as governor (funny how Palin was criticized for this but not Huntsman), wrote his "love letters" to Obama and the Clintons, and went to China for two years to punch his foreign policy ticket and wait for Obama to promote him.
While he was overseas, a funny thing happened---the TEA Party movement rose up against Obama's Marxist agenda, and suddenly it wasn't cool to be a lackey anymore.
Immediately after the 2010 congressional elections, it suddenly dawned on Huntsman that Obama had become vulnerable, and worse yet, someone with TEA Party credentials like Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann might run away with the GOP nomination for 2012, upsetting his fine long-term plans for becoming President in 2016.
Fearing that he was about to miss the boat, he quit his job as ambassador, announced his candidacy, and then ran to the left of Romney, calculating that he could get enough democRat votes to offset Conservative non-votes. However, this strategy proved to be pretty stupid and he could not get out of the single digits because of the stink of Obama that now fumed off him.
The ironic thing is that if Huntsman had remained governor of Utah, and had used that position to openly and loudly attack Obama (alongside Palin), then he would be in serious contention for the nomination right now as a TEA Party governor.
But he didn't and now he's out.
The first two words negate the rest of your first two sentences.
The third sentence is redundant.
Men only see smiles, T & A, and the rest is superfluous, like beads at the Mardi Gras.
Did he ever get more than 80% of his own family voting for him?
Seriously, this guy was a <1% with regard to polling.
He is out of the race because Daddy said: “No more money!!”
I think she said it beautifully! But then, I was a math major.
Why is there even an entire article devoted to this topic, isn’t it plainly obvious?
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