Jonathan Jones

No more Mr Nice Guy | 16 January 2012

So Jon Huntsman is dropping out of the US Presidential race today. Apparently a battle with Rick Perry for fifth in South Carolina didn’t appeal. Even though he looked like the best bet to beat Obama, Huntsman was never likely to win the Republican nomination. When many Republicans were desperately searching for a more conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, running as the more moderate alternative to Mitt Romney wasn’t going to be a winning strategy. This year of all years, you couldn’t see a man who had served in the Obama administration as Ambassador to China and who tweeted ‘I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.’ becoming the Republican nominee. As Obama strategist David Axelrod says, ‘He was simply unwillingly to make the Faustian bargains with the Right that Romney has so willingly made’.

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