This has been rumoured for some time but it still doesn’t make any sense: Jon Huntsman, former Governor of Utah and currently US Ambassador to Beijing, is preparing to run for the GOP’s presidential nomination. Maybe. Politico has the latest on this madness.
Madness? Well it’s certainly rum. If you think Mitt Romney is going to have problems explaining away the similarities between Romneycare in Massachusetts and Obamacare then imagine how difficult it is going to be for Huntsman to explain away actually working for the Obama administration. It’s not, as Ramesh Ponnuru points out, as though he holds some tin-pot job either. Ambassador to China is a hefty, responsible job.
Secondly, how many smooth, wealthy, technocratic Mormons can one primary season need? Where and how does Huntsman differentiate himself from Romney? The obvious place is foreign policy where he could, perhaps, adopt a less stridently nationalistic pose than the rest of the GOP field. But then why is he running against his former boss? The only way that can be explained is if Huntsman joins the rest of the GOP crew in lambasting Obama’s “global apology tour”. But if he does that he counterfeits much of the rationale – if there is one – for his candidacy. It would seem, at this juncture, to be a lose-lose proposition for Huntsman.
Then there’s his style. As he said last year:
“Whoever emerges as the standard-bearer for the Republican cause in four or eight years will have to first prove that they can be a person who delivers results in the incubator or laboratory of democracy, as opposed to someone engaging in gratuitous rhetoric.”
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