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Why Jon Huntsman Juked Left
Zvika Krieger proposes an answer in his profile of the Utah governor, Obama's nominee to be the US ambassador to China:
If Huntsman was planning to run for president, why would he move so brazenly to the left at a time when the GOP seems to be heading rightward? The most obvious reason is that he may actually be a moderate. "I'm not very good at tags," he tells me. "I just try to do my best, and maybe that makes me a pragmatist." He joins a long tradition of moderate Republicans from Utah, despite--or perhaps because of--the fact that the state is the reddest in the country, with the GOP holding every statewide office and more than two-thirds of the state legislature. The GOP lock on Utah politics allows the party to welcome a broader swathe of politicians, and breed leaders who are less combative and ideological than their besieged colleagues in more competitive states. And if Huntsman has learned anything from the failed Mitt Romney campaign, it is that the only thing worse for a Republican than not being a conservative is being a phony conservative.
Emphasis mine. If Huntsman does make a run for the presidency, the big question will be whether or not he will resist that GOP pressure to move right.
Anybody on here from Utah?
I heard some people bitching on the radio that the governor was actually not half-bad as far as UT Reps go. I'm curious to get some inside baseball on this one.
Huntsman is the kind of conservative we need
I've only lived in Utah a couple of years, but friends here who are very inside baseball liked Huntsman. He is not what one expect from a very-Red state governor.
In his re-election campaign last fall, his big pitch was that he had increased spending on education. Can you imagine that?
Utah will miss him.
On the other hand, I am happy that Obama named a fluent Mandarin speaker to be our ambassador to China. And if the day comes, when there are crowds with pitchforks trying to blame all our problems on China, it will help to have a bona fide but sane conservative to help stand down the crowd.
More generally, Utah is different from the South and the Mormons are different from Southern Christians.