Thoughts on Huntsman
Jon Huntsman's announcement that he is running for the Republican nomination strikes me as raising a couple of interesting issues, quite aside from what sort of job he would do as President. One source describes him as the anti-Trump, on the grounds that he is serious and Trump was not.
He strikes me as more nearly the anti-Romney. His most obvious attraction is to conservative Republicans who believe they need a centrist candidate in order to win the election. Like Romney he has a centrist image, but he does not have the same history of appearing to want to be all things to all people and he did not create the first draft of Obamacare. Not knowing a whole lot about either of them and being a libertarian rather than a conservative, I still feel more comfortable with the idea of Huntsman as President than of Romney.
One somewhat ambiguous element, however, is the verbal support that Huntsman is getting from not only the political center but the Democratic establishment. It could be that they have only the welfare of the country at heart—but the obvious suspicion is that they think he would be easier to beat than, say, the current governor of Texas, who seems at the moment to be the most likely conservative nominee.
I was amused by Harry Reid's comment that Romney has flip-flopped on so many policy issues that he “doesn’t know who he is.” Not that I don't agree—but isn't that also true of the candidate that Reid's party plans to nominate?