Posted by
Buster Foghorn on Sunday, August 21, 2011 7:54:02 PM
So what is Mr. Huntsman really after?
Jon Huntsman is a presidential candidate for the Republican nomination; he is also a future asterisk in the 2012 campaign. The Utah Governor left his job in Utah to work in China as Ambassador for President Obama. And as he left China to return home, he praised Mr. Obama in exalted words that few Democrats would choose today.
The news the last few days is that Mr. Huntsman is taking on his Republican primary opponents: attacking their extremism, questioning their electability, spreading his own words of doubt about them as Republicans. But this is a curious strategy if you want to win friends and influence primary voters. You don’t get support from Republican supporters of Michelle Bachman, supporters who will walk over broken glass to vote for her, if you trash their leading lady. You don’t get support from die-hard conservative supporters of Rick Perry, if you jump all over his comments during his early days after entering the race by misrepresenting his response to a question about secession, especially if you sound more like DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz than a Republican. So what is Mr. Huntsman really after?
Since Mr. Huntsman, after his stellar showing in the Iowa straw poll with a ninth place finish and 69 votes, doesn’t appear to be using the Lincoln model: woo supporters of the other candidates so that when their top choice drops out they turn to you as their number two choice, perhaps he is auditioning for some other job?
Does his wife offer us a glimpse of his thinking with a remark she made when her husband first met President Obama? “She glimpsed some kind of spark, a connection between the two men, as if they knew that they would figure jointly in some future history.”
Could it be that Mr. Huntsman wants to return to work for the Obama administration? Stranger things have happened. And with the speculative undercurrent about Mr. Obama selecting a new running mate, perhaps Mr. Huntsman with his executive experience as Utah’s Governor believes he is better positioned than Hillary Clinton to replace Joe Biden and run as number 2 on the Obama ticket in 2012: Jon Huntsman for Vice President. Yes an Obama-Huntsman ticket that is just the thing to bring out the positive vibes, get your blood flowing again, and spark a special magic in the air.