Huntsman resigns, 2012 speculation goes wild

By Michael J.W. Stickings

President Obama's (Republican) ambassador to China, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, resigned today. The CW speculation is that he'll run for president, hoping to challenge his former boss, or at least that he'll explore a run.

He may well do that, the latter if not necessarily the former, and, to be sure, as I wrote recently, he would be a formidable Republican opponent for Obama.

It's possible that he'll end up being the surprise McCain of 2012, an establishment Republican with solid conservative bona fides but also a maverick streak that sets him apart, often to his detriment within the party.

Which is to say, should he run, he could win the nomination if the moderates and establishment conservatives, those who actually want to try to win, get behind him and the right fails to figure out a unifying candidate of its own. He'd have to get by the likes of Romney and Pawlenty, as well as Huckabee and whoever ends up running under the Tea Party banner, but he'd certainly have a good shot at it.

But as I also wrote, it just isn't going to happen. He won't end up running against Obama because he won't win the Republican nomination. As Ezra Klein asks:

Can someone sketch me out an even moderately plausible scenario in which a moderate Republican governor who broke with his party on civil unions and cap-and-trade and then joined the Obama administration wins both the GOP nomination and the presidential election in 2012? 

Well, no -- not unless the GOP completely changes course and rejects its own right-wing mainstream (along with the Tea Party). And, again, that ain't gonna happen.

It's just not his time to lead the party that for the most part has left him behind as it descends ever further into madness.

If I were Obama, I'd be worried about Huntsman

By Michael J.W. Stickings

According to the WaPo's Chris Cillizza, former Republican Utah Gov. and current U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman "appears to be leaning toward a run for president in 2012 and a team of political operatives and fundraisers have begun informal talks and outreach to ensure he could rapidly ramp up if he decides to run."

Huntsman doesn't have the wide national name of a Palin or Romney or a Gingrich or a Barbour or even a Pawlenty, but he's just the sort of sensible, non-ideological conservative who should worry Obama. Here's what I wrote about him back in May '09:

I tend to agree with Obama campaign guru David Plouffe that Utah Governor Jon Huntsman (who makes Plouffe a "wee bit queasy") could be a formidable Republican presidential candidate in 2012. Bucking the rightward shift of his party, and avoiding its drive for ideological purification, Huntsman is actually something of an independent-minded figure, a moderate, relatively speaking (that is, by Utah standards), with potentially broad appeal beyond Dear Leader Rush and the right-wing echo chamber. (I have previously posted on his admirable support for gay civil unions and his admirable dismissal of Congressional Republicans.)

But I also wrote this:

Huntsman may make us all a little queasy, but, thankfully, Republicans are just too stupid to know what's good for them.

That's right, however formidable he may be, or could be on the national stage, he just isn't what Republicans are looking for these days, which is someone well to his right, someone rigidly ideological (like, say, DeMint). As Hot Air's Allahpundit puts it, dismissing Huntsman altogether, "he's going to try to be an even more sensible 'sensible centrist' alternative to Romney, Daniels, and the rest of the moderates in the field." Yes, to conservatives, Huntsman, like Romney and Daniels, is moderate and therefore un-Republican. And it's much worse in Huntsman's case because he actually worked for Obama. No matter that he's appealing and electable, and hardly a liberal.

If I were Obama, I'd be worried about Huntsman -- if he won the Republican nomination. But he won't. And so there's really no need to worry.

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I would just note that there may be nothing, or little, to this. My May '09 post was a response to Cillizza, just as this one is, and so this could just be Cillizza pushing Huntsman or Huntsman using Cillizza to float his future ambitions. I would suspect the latter, as Huntsman certainly seems to have an impressive roster of advisors in his corner, but does he really think he has a shot? Maybe, if he positions himself as the McCain of '12, that is, as an establishment figure with a maverick streak, but '12 won't be like '08, what with the power and influence of the Tea Party within the GOP. Huntsman may not be a RINO, as Allahpundit alleges, but it's not his time to lead the party that for the most part has left him behind as it descends ever further into madness.

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