Huntsman Running a Noble, Doomed Campaign

The former governor is making a lonely pitch for moderation, Dana Milbank writes
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 19, 2011 12:38 PM CDT
Dana Milbank on Jun Huntsman's Doomed Campaign for the Center
Republican presidential candidate former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman arrives at a campaign event at the Town Hall Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011, in Hopkinton, N.H.   (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

The Republican nominating process, “controlled by the religious warriors and anti-government agitators who dominate straw polls, has reached its logical conclusion,” writes Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: A former pizza exec who "likes to joke about electrocuting illegal immigrants" and has no government credentials is topping the polls, while Jon Huntsman, a former governor and ambassador, is an afterthought. “It’s a new world,” an only-a-little-bitter Huntsman tells Milbank. “You throw out anyone with any connection to real-world experience in government.”

Huntsman is going all-in on New Hampshire—what he calls a “Vegas move”—in a last, desperate fight for the political center, banking on a state where only a third of primary voters are to the far right. Of course, with his campaign out of money and national polls putting him at 1% to 2%, it probably won't work, but Milbank hopes it does. Because “a system that rejects a Jon Huntsman in favor of a Herman Cain isn’t a primary process,” he writes. “It is a primal scream.” (More Jon Huntsman stories.)

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