Why Nominating Jon Huntsman Would Cost Republicans More Than Just the Presidency

Republican Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman has gained notoriety this election cycle not for arguing that the United States should move troops back into Iraq or that HPV vaccines may cause mental retardation, but for defending his belief in evolution and deferring to the majority opinion in the scientific community that global warming is real and man-made. His credentials as a former Republican governor of Utah and current Ambassador to China under the Obama administration have given rise to a belief among some that he would be a formidable adversary in the general election should he be the Republican party’s nominee in 2012. The view is that he sufficiently represents Republican ideals to capture a super-majority of the Republican vote and enough of the “independent” vote to win the general election. Perhaps, goes the theory, he could even siphon off a portion of the Democrat voters who either lean moderate or are simply disillusioned by Obama’s underwhelming performance his first term in office.

However, it is telling that the people who most admire him for these credentials are Democrats who would not vote for him anyway. Huntsman is the Democrat’s idea of what a Republican should be, but that does not make him either party’s idea of what a President should be. He is palatable to Democrats ideologically, so it is more comprehensible to them that he might capture the votes of others–they won’t support him, but they can understand how others might. By comparison, when you throw candidates like Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum into the mix, a win would be unimaginable–after all, “I perceive him as an extremist, so how could he possibly win a general election?”

Recent history has shown that moderation is not the key to winning a general election. While Obama was making promises of implementing nationalized healthcare and “fundamentally transforming” America, Republicans ran a “moderate” candidate in 2008–John McCain–who repeatedly distanced himself from the Republican core beliefs and emphasized how he was a “maverick” of the party. Republicans nominated McCain because he was who they though could be elected–the outsider who was “not Bush”–not who they wanted elected.

The results of McCain’s nomination were so catastrophic for Republicans that there was serious discussion about whether they marked the end of the Republican party. The lesson was that people don’t vote for someone because they are not someone else; they vote because they believe in what the person represents. The “I am not Bush” theme did not work for John Kerry in 2004, and it would not have worked for Barrack Obama in 2008 either except that John McCain ran on that theme as well. No Republican will win on the theme of “I am not Obama”.

But the losses of a Huntsman nomination would not be limited to the Presidential election: if he was the Republican nominee, conservatives, who by far make up the majority of the party, would respond in one of three ways: (1) vote for Huntsman begrudgingly, so desperate to remove Obama that they would literally vote for a Republican tree stump if it improved the chances of removing Obama from office, (2) vote for a third party candidate, or (3) stay home. Given how evenly divided the country is ideologically right now, if an extra 10% of conservative voters simply refused to show at the polls out of protest, it would defeat the Republican candidate, tank Republican hopes of a Senate takeover, and likely return the House of Representatives to Democratic control as well. The winners of the 2012 election will be the candidates who can turn their base out in the largest numbers. Right now, the Republicans have an understandable enthusiasm advantage. Jon Huntsman is the liberal’s darling of the Republican party, but he would decimate conservative enthusiasm, and ultimately conservative turnout in 2012.


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