John Huntsman is running for President in the G.O.P. As a moderate Republican you might think in the knife fight of our current politics, he’s lost before he’s started. But if with a little luck and some guts he could win it because, in one major way, he is the best positioned candidate.
The most obvious thing about Huntsman’s campaign is how thoroughly he is written off. He supports civil unions, Obama’s stimulus, immigration reform, and (worst of all) civility. Not only does he actually believe in climate change, he even supported cap-and-trade. (He is working his views rightward; more on that soon.) To crown this, he actually worked for Obama. So the common wisdom says he is a guaranteed also-ran.
At best, some speculate he’s actually setting up for a real run in 2016. But most write him off as an oddly unaware fellow who has shown up to a hockey fight with a badminton racket and a nice cup of tea.
But think about this: He is positioned to be the only Republican who is not (1) a nasty screaming right-wing attack ferret, nor (2) Ron Paul. In fact comparing him to Paul is instructive. Paul isn’t right wing, he’s flat-out libertarian; he can’t be placed on the traditional left-right spectrum at all. But Huntsman can. He’s to the left of the other candidates. As in:
On this line, I’ve noted the traditional span of the Republican Party. You remember it, possibly semi-fondly, as a party that had both moderates and civil, patriotic conservatives.
While the leader-lemmings have run rightward towards the Tea Party, an entire major chunk of the Republican Party has been left behind. Although we can assume that many rank-and-file have drifted rightward, there must be many others who haven’t drunk the kool-aid.
So if Huntsman can last long enough to get through a few debates, and gain enough money to be taken seriously, there is are many Republican and Republican-leaning independents to the left of everyone else but Huntsman.
In a simplistic model, that would be Huntsman’s victory. He would get all the votes to his left, plus some of the votes to his right, and the other candidates split the rest. Game over, Huntsman vs. Obama in November.
But it isn’t that simple. There are issues of political lifeblood: money and media attention. As long as the standard narrative of the mainstream media remains that the Tea Party is the primary constituency, it may be hard to stay in the race and get enough exposure to pick up those voters, if they haven’t left the party in disgust already.
But leaving that aside, why is Huntsman busily sidling rightwards while pretending he was there all along?
Well, first he has to not be totally discounted as a candidate so he can raise money. And in the end, of course, he can’t totally alienate right-wing voters he will need in November, should he be so lucky.
Primarily, though, it’s a pretty simple bit of game strategy. Generally speaking, he can expect to get most Republicans to his left as long as he’s the left-most candidate, no matter how far right he is. And he can expect to split the people to his right with the next right-most candidate. So he’s better off the farther to the right he is, as long as he doesn’t get to the right of anyone else.
So I wouldn’t count out Jon Huntsman. Most candidates stand the barest possible chance of winning the nomination, but the others are all playing the same strategy – squeeze up against the right-hand wall of the electorate and when someone else does too, dynamite a new hole in the wall and go further rightward. Huntsman is one of the few trying another path. And it is a surprisingly strong one if he plays it right.