Reminds me of the Dems getting excited about Kerry because he'd sway right wing voters with his military history and his moderate positions.
Huntsman won't win the nomination because the brutal truth is that being a kinda-sorta lefty doesn't actually win any left votes when the real deal is already in office. And it costs you votes from the far right. Combine that with the Christian versus Mormon vote problem and he's just not electable in this system.
Which is a shame because he's certainly got a lot going for him. I listened to him talk about how he's pro gay civil unions while leaving the term marriage out of it as a separation of the religious side versus compete equality from a legal perspective - it was well said. He talked seriously about his own moral compass telling him devoted same sex relationships deserved all that rights that others do. He was also fairly candid about how much he liked Obama and how well he's doing in certain areas.
But either his campaign will have to change drastically or he'll never get the nomination. A lot of his quotes are basically poison to the staunch right wing.
First, great post. I think his candidacy with be very interesting, and I don't 100% agree with your analysis.
As I've argued many times, I think the moderate vote is the swing factor in modern presidential elections. You have a roughly equal number of diehards on each side that are blind party followers. These guys are going to vote for whoever names appears next to their party, regardless of any other factor, or whether they wanted that person in the primary. Hilary voters all voted for Obama, even if they had sour grapes. The same would happen with Huntsman and the far right.
Then you've got the 10-15% that could go either way. Huntsman is a candidate that might actually do better in a general than the primary, because he will look interesting to that (perhaps large) class of voters that has no interest in Tea Party-stained GOP leadership, but aren't head-over-heels for Obama either. They'll take a look at an intellectual, socially-liberal fiscal conservative that seems open-minded and has a good record.
I agree that Huntsman is a long-shot because the hard right will not want him to carry the conservative banner, and they seem to driving the GOP bus. But if he somehow snaked his way through the GOP primaries with his current profile intact--by that I mean he didn't sell out his moderate positions to pander for Tea Party votes to secure the nomination-- he's a guy who the middle could come to like.
After the primary, he's not losing votes on his right flank. The Tea Party will vote for basically anyone against a Dem (especially the terrifying Obama) -- Sarah Palin proved that -- so it's not like he'd leak votes from the GOP base. Where Shot and I disagree is that he doesn't have to capture left votes from Obama, he only needs to win over moderate voters who don't love Obama but refuse to readopt hard right conservatism so soon after the Bush debacle.
If you win the right and more of the middle, you win. Same goes for the left. But I doubt he ever gets the chance, which is why I think the GOP is doomed to lose in 2012. They won't run a candidate that appeals to moderate voters, and they don't have the base to win without them. Neither party does, but Obama still has broad appeal to the middle, especially in comparison to the rest of the GOP field.
