Hunstman blasts his Republican rivals.

[TJ in Oregon]

I think part of the reason why Huntsman is so popular on this forum is that to any non-conservative, he appears to be the only one in the group a liberal can find much in common with (apart from maybe Ron Paul). Part of human nature is to contrast one candidate against another, eg if one side is 'bad' the other is 'good'. Since no one wants to just hate everyone, Jon Huntsman is the clear choice for the 'good guy' out of the Republican field. But, when the general election comes, we'll have five solid months of Obama and the GOP candidate building a contrast against one another. Obama and Huntsman would be fighting tooth and nail to explain to the American people exactly why they are correct and their opponent is wrong about the future of America. We'll be talking about how to make budget cuts, change the tax code, handle environmental regulations, and what they believe about abortion. Once we get there, the dissention will return to Obama unless the election is a complete rout.

Of course, I haven't mentioned moderates yet. Clearly the choice of just who is the Republican nominee will greatly affect the outcome here. If the Republicans nominate someone like Bachmann, Perry, or Palin, it's going to ruin them. But, call me crazy, I have enough faith left in the Republican party to nominate Mitt Romney, not one of the candidates with less credibility. The media may focus heavily on the Tea Party since it’s a more exciting story but at the end of the day there are a lot of Republican voters who aren’t stupid, some of them are even social conservatives if you can believe it. You’ll notice Mitt Romney is currently the front-runner. Yes, there is a difference between how moderate voters will react to Romney and Huntsman. Huntsman’s advantage is that he is more moderate than Romney and perceived as more ‘real’ than Romney. But, Romney also has the advantage of having been a national figure before this year. If the Republican Party chose Huntsman tomorrow, half the country would think the Republicans are intentionally losing because they’ve never heard of him. You would also depress turnout on the right, since many conservatives would find his support for civil unions are admission he may raise taxes as unacceptable.

In order to win the Republican nomination, the thing Huntsman would need to do is convince Romney supporters that he is a better candidate. The Tea Party crowd supporting Bachmann or Perry isn’t going to wake up some morning and decide to change views on every issue in the primary. No, Huntsman needs to be the establishment candidate and to do that he needs to take down Romney. So far, and correct me if I’m wrong here (I haven’t been closely following him), Huntsman has mostly criticized Bachmann, Perry, and Gingrich. But not really gone after Romney all that much. I think the best way Huntsman can do this (for him anyways, not so much for the party) is to attack Romney hard for flip-flopping on abortion. He needs to convince conservatives he is the only electable candidate who is truly pro-life. If he did that, he might be able to eat away some of Romney’s support. However, if Huntsman succeeded to do that, it could also open the door for someone like Perry or Bachmann to win by splitting apart Romney’s vote.

If Huntsman wants my vote, he needs to explain to me why a strong but reasonable social conservative should support him instead of Romney.