Good-Bye, Governor Asterisk

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MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.
I was sitting here working on my American Spectator column, with the Huckabee forum on Fox News playing on the TV behind me, when my son Jefferson yelled from the other room to tell me this news, which was a bulletin on the “crawl” on the TV that I wasn’t watching.

Huntsman Says He’s Quitting G.O.P. Race
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Jon M. Huntsman Jr. informed his advisers on Sunday that he intends to drop out of the Republican presidential race, ending his candidacy a week before he had hoped to revive his campaign in the South Carolina primary.
Mr. Huntsman, who had struggled to live up to the soaring expectations of his candidacy, made plans to make an announcement as early as Monday. He had been set to participate in an evening debate in Myrtle Beach.
Matt David, campaign manager to Mr. Huntsman, confirmed the decision in an interview Sunday evening. “The governor and his family, at this point in the race, decided it was time for Republicans to rally around a candidate who could beat Barack Obama and turn around the economy,” Mr. David said. “That candidate is Gov. Mitt Romney.”

Or at least, so says the campaign manager for the least plausible candidate in the history of Republican presidential campaigns.

UPDATE: It was during the Aug. 11 debate in Ames, Iowa, that I first started referring to Huntsman as “Governor Asterisk,” who somehow managed to get himself included in debates despite poll numbers lower than the margin of error. I subsequently developed that sobriquet into a column at the American Spectator, written on the eve of the Sept. 12 CNN/Tea Party Express debate in Tampa:

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer should begin the Republican presidential debate tonight by asking Jon Huntsman a simple question: “Why are you here?”
The former Utah governor’s campaign has no obvious political rationale and is barely a statistical blip in national polls. . . .
Of course, Blitzer would never question the legitimacy of Huntsman’s candidacy for the simple reason that CNN anchor is a leading member of Huntsman’s most important constituency, the media. . . .

Huntsman was always every liberal’s favorite GOP candidate — the folks on MSNBC loved him — and that was demonstrated conclusively last week:

According to exit polls, Huntsman only won a handful of demographics in New Hampshire: Democrats, those who oppose the Tea Party, and voters who are generally satisfied with the Obama administration.

His daughters were nice-looking, though. So we’ll miss them. But their dad’s candidacy served only one purpose: Wasting TV debate time, and it will be nice to have a Huntsman-free stage at the South Carolina debates this week.

UPDATE II: Ed Morrissey:

Jon Huntsman wasn’t a “pragmatic centrist who could reach out to Democrats.” He governed in Utah as a conservative in a state controlled by the GOP, but talked like a centrist who despised conservatives. Huntsman’s expensive and embarrassing flop really isn’t much more complicated than that.

It will be interesting to look at the FEC reports on his campaign.

UPDATE III: Linked by The Western Experience and Maggie’s Notebook — thanks! — while Bob Belvedere at the Camp of the Saints worries that Mandarin-speaking snobs now have no one to vote for, and Mike Rogers at Granite Grok analyzes the cause of Huntsman’s failure: He was running out of asterisks.

UPDATE IV: Thanks to Adjoran in the comments for noting that the Columbia State, supposedly South Carolina’s most influential newspaper, had endorsed Huntsman in a Sunday editorial, published mere hours before Huntsman quit. These guys are even more clueless than the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, which endorsed Newt Gingrich, who finished fifth in the New Hampshire primary.

63 comments

  2. Aw, and just when he was catching fire, too . . .

    I cannot resist the schadenfreude – endorsed by The State this morning, out by this evening!  McClatchy wisdom strikes again!

  3. This story was rich in examples of just how delusional Huntsman was:

    “Mr. Huntsman, who had struggled to live up to the soaring expectations of his candidacy…”  Whose expectations ever soared, other than the Huntsman family’s?  Too bad his announcement coincided with the “Grizzly Adams” marathon running on cable or some of those soaring expectations might have infected someone else not named Huntsman.

    “…his campaign limped into South Carolina with little money.”  When even your “billionaire corporate titan” daddy won’t give you any more money, you know you really suck.

    “Voters also seemed wary of a candidacy by a man whose most recent
    service was to the very many he now wanted to oust. Fawning letters that
    Mr. Huntsman wrote about Mr. Obama’s leadership did not help that case.” Gee, ya think?

    “Mr. Huntsman’s campaign had been spearheaded from the beginning by John
    Weaver, a veteran Republican consultant who had once been a top adviser
    to Senator John McCain during his presidential bids.”  Wow, with such a proven winner at the helm I must admit I’m shocked that Huntsman didn’t at least double his poll numbers…all the way up to 2.5%.

    “Mr. Huntsman was the two-term governor of Utah with impeccable foreign policy credentials.” Other than being Obama’s mouthpiece in Beijing, what were those credentials again?

    “And Mr. Obama’s top advisers seemed to see the danger in Mr. Huntsman’s
    candidacy as well, signaling in 2009 that they thought he might a strong
    presidential contender.”  Yes, we was #3 on their list of feared opponents right behind Dan Quayle and Alf Landon.

    “The impact of Mr. Huntsman’s departure is not clear. Polls have
    indicated that he has little support in South Carolina and his lack of
    money means that he had been unable to affect a campaign conversation
    that is dominated by television commercials now that it has moved out of
    the first two early primary states.” Uh, no.  The impact is very clear and stated quite well in the last sentence of that statement.  In a word the impact will be: zero.

    “Mr. Huntsman becomes the fourth announced Republican candidate to drop out of the race.”  Close but no cigar.  Besides Pawlenty, Cain and Bachmann there was McCotter and Johnson making Huntsman number 7 (or fourth with an asterisk).

    This article doesn’t mention it, but I think his goose was finally cooked when that planted Chinese lady asked him a question the other day so he could show off his mad Mandarin skillz.  What a….dork.

  5. Of course, the burning question with just five more days until the SC primary is:  how will the other candidates divide up Huntsman’s support (fractional voting is not permitted in South Carolina)?

    The word is Huntsman intends to endorse Romney.  Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if he did it in Mandarin?

    The ironic thing is that if Huntsman had only told Obama to go pound sand when he asked him to be Ambassador to China, he wouldn’t have written the effusively fawning letters to Obama and Bill Clinton which would have been Green Kryptonite if he had ever made noise in the campaign, his record would have warranted a run (hey, if career legislators can run, successful two-term Governors can) and he might have even been a contender.

    Bad enough to be a cloying suck-up, but being stupid enough to put it all in writing is disqualifying on its face.

  8. Well, Huntsman, Pawlenty, Cain, Bachmann, McCotter, and Johnson are only six, but I think technically Cain and Bachmann just suspended their campaigns, which allows them to continue to solicit and spend money as a federal candidate.  Maybe that’s splitting the hairs too finely – but it’s still only six.

  10. […] Jon Huntsman Drops Out: Huntsman to Endorse Romney: Debate Monday Night January 15, 2012By MaggieThat’s the whole of the story. Not much else to say about it. Fox said tonight that Gingrich is about 5 points behind Romney, and in second place, with Santorum at a distant third. The latest poll I can find is RealClearPolitics, January 13th. Huntsman will make the announcement and endorsement tomorrow, Monday January 16, 2012. Source: Charlotte Observer Stacy McCain has in-depth analysis. […]

  11. Don’t be too surprised if they go to Gingrich instead.  not that it will matter.    outside of the university towns, no one cared for Jon Huntsman. 

  12. He was an odd duck. I was never able to get a sense of why he was running or what constituency he thought he capture.

  16. Yeah that was a real shock, wasn’t it? Everybody was sure the NFC Championship would be San Francisco playing the Packers. Dammit, I was all set to bet money on San Francisco. They’re old hands at playing with the Packers.

  17. It’s too bad really.  He had a solid conservative record as Governor. And my RINOish  side loves the fact that he was genuinely cosmopolitan, nuanced, and intellectual in a party that frequently doesn’t value that.

    OTOH, when the chips were down he inevitably was happy to suck up to the liberal media and reinforce their worst, most baseless, stereotypes of conservatives. And even more than McCain in 2008, the media was his only base.

    So in sum, a lot of interesting potential wasted.  Good riddance. .

  19. True enough.  I thought of a test – put Huntsman and Obama in a locked room with only one mirror. 

    I was going to call it “The Great Presidential Preen-Off” . . .

  22. Off topic, but there is a new MSNBC promo running (on NBC).  It’s just Ed Schultz, standing in front of the Capitol bad-mouthing Republicans.  That’s it.

    They aren’t even pretending any more.

  33. Which party does value those things?  Certainly not the party of Joe Biden, John Kerry, Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee?

    But I agree:  good riddance.

  35. Why would he offer him anything for support that can’t beat the margin of error in any state except New Hampshire?

    But I have no problem at all with sending him back to China!

  38. Ya know, I’m a plugged-in and interested guy politically, with a bevy of daily internet sources of news from left to middle to right. I read a lot. I hang out with, and work with, a bunch of politically connected and active people. I occasionally do legal work for local pols or campaigns. I know who wants to be the next State House representative in District Whatever. I usually know why they won’t be. I’m pretty good at guessing who will be. I’ve been a moderate Republican for about thirty-five years.  (“Moderate” meaning, let’s not spend that money right now, plus, if we heteros have to get married, then those gay people should have to, too.) My one brief foray into Democratia was in the employ of pre-VP Mondale, but only (okay, mostly) because I had a huge crush on his cutie daughter, which didn’t work out that well and so resulted in my having no gf and having to hang out with lots of Democrats, and so it was a short employment . . .

    I typed all of that out so that I could then say, see, those are my credentials, I’m generally considered to be somebody who knows who’s who on both local and national levels of politics.

    And yet, for the life of me, every time I see or hear John Huntsman’s name mentioned in regard to this presidential election, my reaction is always the same:

    Who?

    He’s quit, now, and, frankly, I STILL don’t know who he is.

  41. See, you have “Huntsman” and “impact” in the same thought.  This must be wrong.

    But yes, Romney only beat him by 20% in New Hampshire.

  45. God you’re stubborn as hell. I’m talking about the impact if there were only a percent or two difference between Romney and Santorum, or Romney and Gingrich, or for that matter Paul. That could make all the difference if Huntsman stayed in for the winner-take-all primaries.

  46. The next one out will be Perry, though I’m not so sure he’ll be out after SC like most people. I think he might stay in through Florida, then get out. And the next person out after him will be Santorum, who will endorse Romney when he does get out. Then look for Mittens to choose Santorum as his running mate when he DOES get the nomination. By the time the winner-take-all primaries start Romney will have enough of a delegate lead to be considered the presumptive nominee and he won’t need Santorum any longer. Mittens of course will refuse to engage in any Lincoln-Douglas style debates with Gingrich, who will be reduced to sumo mud wrestling events with Chris Christie. Mark my words.

    Of course I could be wrong about the VP pick. Rick might get himself a cushy paid job as Christian Evangelical Outreach Coordinator for Bane Crapital.

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