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Jon Huntsman has dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination for president. That silence you hear is the combined sighs of relief of all the candidates who were threatened by his candidacy. Will we miss Huntsman? Yeah. No one’s much bothered one way or the other. Now the 1 percent or so of the GOP’s loyal Huntsman backers are free to fall in behind one of the other candidates. Yeah, again.

I met Utah’s Governor Jon Huntsman and his wife Mary Kaye at an event in Las Vegas. My wife Sandie Tillotson had arranged for us to sit in the VIP section with them. Huntsman was a good friend of NuSkin, and helped open the lucrative Chinese market when he was a Trade Representative ... for the Bush Administration. MLM companies had tried to get into China for years, but NuSkin was the first, and Sandie said it was because of Hunstman. Of course it went both ways, and NuSkin was a good friend to Hunstman, and Sandie said she sent...

Tuning in Morning Joe today, I half expected to discover on the set some professional mourners imported from North Korea, keening and crying over the political demise of Jon Huntsman. Huntsman had had the Morning Joe crowd from hello. The overwhelming winner of the bien-pensant MSM primary was amazingly popular—except with actual Republican voters, who didn't dig his moderate positioning and a tone that some found . . . well, how do you say "supercilious" in Mandarin? Taking today's cake was Joe Scarborough finding Huntsman's "moderate temperament" Reaganesque, and claiming that in rejecting Huntsman, Republicans have "turned their backs" on...

Jon Huntsman was endorsed by Columbia, S.C.'s The State newspaper on Sunday. The endorsement comes less than a week before the South Carolina primary and comes as Huntsman quickly tries to gain traction in the Palmetto state. The State's endorsement is actually similar to what happened just before the New Hampshire primary: Mitt Romney's hometown paper, The Boston Globe, backed Huntsman in a long editorial in which it compared Romney with the former Utah governor. Like the Globe endorsement, The State praised both Romney and Huntsman but said Huntsman was the better candidate. "There are actually two sensible, experienced grownups," The...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Many of Mitt Romney's presidential challengers are having trouble fulfilling a fundamental requirement of running for public office: getting on the ballot. Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman have all failed to qualify for the ballot in at least one upcoming GOP primary. In other states, they have failed to file full slates of delegates with state or party officials, raising questions about whether these candidates have the resources to wage effective national campaigns.

Even those who believe themselves devoted patriots (including devout Christians) may foolishly be enticed by the powers that be, into violating Americans' sacred and essential Popular and national Sovereignties. It has been happening for a long time, now. People who believe in a Sovereign nation called the United States of America are being duped into not only violating the mandates of our Constitution, but even worse, into nullifying our own Declaration of Independence from the control of foreign, kleptocratic power. This is the tragedy for all, of those who foolishly follow the stratagems of those seeking hegemony over us via...

Following much thoughtful consternation, I have decided to pull my support and endorsement of Texas Governor Rick Perry for the GOP presidential nomination.  I realize the redstate diary commenters, won’t be kind but this needs to be said.  This decision wasn’t easy but a serious evaluation of the field should inform us that Rick Perry has no realistic path to victory in South Carolina, Florida and beyond. I realize that redstate.com’s Erick Erickson continues to stick by him, that South Carolina is Perry’s state and that he has re-tooled his staff.  But it is too little too late and at...

So Jon Huntsman can speak Mandarin and also he adopted a little Chinese girl who was abandoned in a market. Providing us with yet more evidence that they are mostly liberal Democrats who are mad that Obama has governed too far to the right, Ron Paul supporters decided this was a good reason to produce a video putting Huntsman in a Mao hat and jacket, complete with what is I guess supposed to be a Chinese version of blackface: [video] Clearly Paul’s supporters are smarting a bit from finishing well behind a guy with no money and no campaign organization...

Tomorrow less than 20 percent of registered Republicans in Iowa are going to tell us who they believe should take on President Obama. Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, who has bypassed the caucuses, said last week that Iowa picks corn, not presidents. Is he correct? Well, if you ask Mike Huckabee, he would say yes. But on the other hand, Obama did win the state. Iowa’s importance will be in whittling down the field of contenders. It is most likely going to claim several conservatives, which means that their voters could flock to another right-wing candidate — not necessarily the frontrunner....

I have grown cynical of party politics in mature democracies, including the most exciting democracy of all, the United States. In the middle of a spectrum exclusively defined by Republicans and Democrats, personality and style must be favored over platforms that few candidates are ever able to implement. So many people are bored by politics in the U.S. that half of the voters don’t bother to vote. This is not necessarily a bad thing. If politics does not affect the daily life of citizens, to the extent that most can choose to ignore it, then some wisdom has been found...

Welcome to the Post’s new politics and culture blog, “She the People: The World as Women See It.” Though dedicated to the proposition that politics properly understood encompasses just about everything, I thought we’d start with some predictions about Tuesday’s caucuses in Iowa, where a bunch of our writers rang in the new year with Republicans. My own bet is that Rick Santorum will indeed score the surprise of the night, just as he told me he would . Yet even if he wins outright, four years from now in Iowa, I further predict that we in the media will...

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry failed to submit enough valid signatures to qualify for the Virginia primary ballot, state GOP officials said Friday evening. Perry’s campaign told state election officials it had submitted 11,911 signatures, but a Virginia Republican familiar with the situation said that the Texas governor did not submit the required 10,000. Earlier Friday, the Republican Party of Virginia certified former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) to appear in the March ballot. Four candidates — Romney, Perry, Paul and former House speaker Newt Gingrich — turned in thousands of signatures by the deadline. State...

I vote for Newt! --- * Newt Gingrich? * Mitt Romney? * Rick Perry? * Michele Bachmann? * Rick Santorum? * Jon Huntsman?

Gingrich 28% Romney 24% Paul 10% Bachmann 8% Perry 6% Santorum 4% Huntsman 2%

These days if you don't like the polls, wait a few minutes. Another will be along shortly. Speaking of which, here's a new one this morning that could presage the start of a significant move by one candidate (or not), as well as some fresh insights into the thinking of those New Hampshire voters who'll hold the nation's first Republican primary early next month. Suffolk University is out with a new survey showing Newt Gingrich gaining and Mitt Romney slipping there, which we already knew. What it also shows though is Jon Huntsman making a push into third place with...

Mitt Romney will be missing in The Gift of Life premiere audience, as well as Ron Paul, a pro-life doctor, and as Jon Huntsman. When I asked Governor Huckabee if tonight amounts to an endorsement application test, Huckabee gives them all a pass. “More than anyone” he tells me, “I recognize that candidates have frantic schedules and all can’t come to every event. Those who don’t come aren’t snubbing the pro-life issue, but those who do are showing that they believe it to be a priority and that is significant.” Interestingly, Nancy Keenan from NARAL takes the premiere as an...

Rick Santorum isn’t just attending the debate moderated by Donald Trump. He’s also emerging as one of the debate’s strongest defenders. “Many of my opponents jockeyed to be the first to fly up to New York and use Donald Trump for a photo op and no doubt try and secure an endorsement. But when Donald wants to moderate a debate — they refuse to attend. That’s what’s so wrong with politics today — hypocrisy,” Santorum said in a strongly worded statement issued last night. Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Jon Huntsman have all announced they will...

According to recent polls, Paul ranks among the top three candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire. But unlike most candidates, given the war chest Paul has amassed and his ability to raise money, there’s no pressing reason for him to drop out quickly even if he begins with a string of disappointing early state performances. As of the fundraising quarter that ended Sept. 30, Paul had raised more than $12 million, the bulk of in small donations. Few others in the field can claim an ongoing donor base to raise money from once voting starts winnowing out the candidates. Paul...

One wonders, therefore, if a conservative case could be made for former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, as has been suggested by several conservative columnists recently, including George Will, Jim Pethokoukis, and Joe Scarborough. Indeed, it is interesting that Huntsman was so quickly dismissed as a RINO, when many of his positions actually appear to be to the right of both Romney and Gingrich. On health care, for example, Huntsman flirted with an individual mandate — unfortunately, a lot of conservatives did when the idea was being pushed by the Heritage Foundation — but, unlike Romneycare, the plan he ultimately developed...

Jon Huntsman would do better in an election against President Obama than Rick Perry would. That’s the latest news from a Rasmussen poll released today and taken over Dec. 4-5, which shows Obama earning 46 percent support among Republicans nationwide to Perry’s 34 percent. That’s the first Rasmussen matchup that gives the president a double-digit lead over Perry. In November, Obama’s lead was nine points–but before the GOP debates, Perry held a three-point advantage over the president, with 44 percent support to Obama’s 41 percent.