Huntsman, Out Of Step With His Party, Steps Aside
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman was the answer to a call for moderation and pragmatism that no one in the Republican Party ever made.
Huntsman will end his presidential bid on Monday, two senior campaign officials confirmed to National Journal, bringing to a close his quixotic crusade to nudge the Republican Party away from its own right flank.
Huntsman's decision comes after he finished a disappointing third in last week's New Hampshire primary. Two campaign officials confirmed that he will end his campaign and endorse former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who won the New Hampshire contest.
That endorsement will help Romney coalesce the more socially moderate fiscal conservatives who make up about half of the South Carolina Republican electorate. With three other candidates -- Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum -- vying to win over a majority of social conservatives and Rep. Ron Paul largely earning support from independents and libertarians, Romney now stands alone as the candidate who best appeals to that more centrist slice of his party.
Huntsman's shortcomings are proof that his Republican Party is confident in its place on the national political spectrum. While Huntsman represented a turn to the middle and a broader appeal to independent voters and conservative Democrats, the rest of the field -- including Romney -- have spent their campaigns drawing sharp contrasts with the other side.
Huntsman had sought to portray himself as an electable, pragmatic alternative to the Republican field. He made a point to support teaching the theory of evolution and to acknowledge the science behind climate change, and he cast himself more recently as the only candidate who has put service to the nation before his own political party, by serving as President Obama's ambassador to China.
Those views did not resonate with voters in New Hampshire, or nationally. His message proved out of step with a Republican base driven by Tea Party populism and anger with the political status quo. If Huntsman didn't represent that status quo, voters certainly didn't see their anger reflected in his calm demeanor.
And Huntsman's cross-party appeal came at the wrong time in his own party's historic arc. After winning control of the House in 2010, a Republican electorate bullish on its own chances for 2012 was not interested in a message of moderation and pragmatism. Instead, that sort of refocus typically finds better resonance in a party that has just suffered major defeats and needs to recalibrate its image, rather than a party that sees itself on the rise.
In short, there proved no appetite within the Republican Party for Huntsman's brand of statesman-like post-partisanship.
He ended his bid after falling short in New Hampshire, the only contest in which he truly competed. He skipped Iowa, a caucus state in which social conservatives wield an out-sized influence, to focus on New Hampshire, where independents may vote in the Republican primary. Huntsman virtually moved to the state and eventually held more than 160 events with New Hampshire voters -- he even joked that the state should pay him a fee for promoting it so heavily in media appearances.
But after finishing in third behind Romney and Paul, it became clear Huntsman's campaign had no obvious path to victory. He traveled to South Carolina and held several events around the state last week, but his campaign didn't air television ads -- a sign money was running low -- and even a super PAC that had backed his bid stayed virtually silent.
Some centrists, including those behind the independent group Americans Elect, had approached Huntsman to consider a third-party bid for the White House. But Huntsman will seemingly slam the door on that prospect when he announces his exit by endorsing Romney. The two, both members of prominent families in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, have had a strained and tense relationship dating to before the 2002 winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
Huntsman's exit means only five candidates will meet on stage for a debate sponsored by the South Carolina Republican Party and Fox News in Myrtle Beach tomorrow night. It is the first of two debates -- the other is Thursday in Charleston -- before South Carolina voters head to the polls on Saturday.
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