AP: Huntsman to Announce Bid Next Week

[Badger]

If he does this right he could be positioned very strongly for 2016.

How? To do so he has to actually perform well in some races. All the MSM adoration in the world won't matter much if he can't at least break 20% in NH and win somewhere. The best example would be also rans from 08 like Huckabee, or at a much lower threshold level would be Wesley Clark in 04. I can't imagine Huntsman doing anywhere as well as Huckabee, and I have great difficulty seeing how he even breaks out of the pack to win anywhere and place a few respectable second place finishes elsewhere.

He's simply too moderate and too Mormon for the national GOP primaries, and with Romney already filling that void this wasn't the year to run.

[Badger]

How? To do so he has to actually perform well in some races.

Obviously he has to perform as well as Romney 2008 did. Besides a few exceptions, the GOP nominates the candidate that has established themselves the most, usually through previous tries at the nomination. This is why, unless some Earth shattering event, Romney will be the nominee in this upcoming election.

The only way that running this year hurts Huntsman is if he runs a campaign as inept as Thompson 2008, which is simply possible but not probable.

Coming for opposite ends of the expectations scale, with Thompson being intially lauded as "the New Reagan" and Huntsman being labeled as either "far too moderate" or simply "who?", then I suppose finishing a weak 3rd in two important early states before dropping out wouldn't kill his future presidential ambitions, but I'm not sure it'd help them either. Regardless, I'm skeptical whether he can manage even that.

Maybe it would've been better to take Hatch's seat (polls showed him a mile ahead of Orrin earlier this year, IIRC) to earn some chits with the teabaggers as a "Washington insider slayer", then keep his powder dry for later runs in 16 or 20.