Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman on Monday will reportedly drop out of the Republican nomination fight and endorse fellow Mormon moderate Mitt Romney, whom he once called “completely unelectable.”
Not that Huntsman was the greatest Republican candidate ever, but it’s borderline ridiculous that a man who has served as a state chief executive, a businessman, a diplomat, a veteran of four presidential administrations and an expert on China and on foreign trade could never really get any traction over the lesser qualified and more rhetorically bruising candidates in the field.
While Huntsman never really had a shot — his brand of moderate, tempered politics has no place in the modern GOP — the decision to bow out by the former U.S. ambassador to China does mark the official end to what could have potentially been a most interesting campaign experiment. It would have been quite fun to see what a Huntsman v. President Obama general election looked like: actual policy positions, less snarking and partisan back-biting than usual, a reasonable take on the issues.
So with the departures of Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Tim Pawlenty and now Huntsman, we’re left with five Republicans going for the nomination: Romney, Paul, Gingrich, Perry and Santorum. READ MORE HERE.



