If Huntsman is setting himself up for 2016 he’s doing it wrong.  Is anyone paying attention to him?  Anyone?  Seems Bachmann and Perry sucked any air he might have gotten out of the room.

Sad or pathetic? Pathetic or sad?

Here’s my takeaway point. Huntsman is a very big fish from a very smal pond. His father was someone hugely important in Utah and he was too.  Its impossible to imagine how delusional someone like that is about their own talents, let alone their own position on the national stage.  Its like Ann Richardson’s line “born on third and thinks he hit a triple.” 

Huntsman was the scariest of the Republican side, to me, because he’s the most like an actual human being.  He’s been abroad, speaks a foreign language, has some grasp of humans and humanity.  In theory he’d be the only kind of centrist white guy who should be a threat to Obama. But Obama neutralized him when he made him ambassador. And Huntsman’s human bonafides aren’t relevant in the Republican primary anyway.  They don’t want sweet reason, and they don’t want commonsense solutions or whatever their catch phrase of the day is. They want blood. And Huntsman’s all milquetoast.

But the question is, why doesn’t Huntsman know it? And the answer is that these guys have a totally inflated sense of self worth.  It makes me admire Obama even more, as a politician, because Obama really seems to have gone into his long shot campaign with a very clear understanding that it was a longshot. He never let all the adulation that he received from his inner circle go to his head and he never confuses what he thinks about himself with what the country thinks (or will think) about him.

aimai

He announced an endorsement from someone working on his campaign? Damn.

This morning I had one of those incoherent thoughts your REM brain fires off as you’re waking up: Huntsman is a Jackelope.

After reading this, I’m thinking I should see if my REM brain will fire off some lottery numbers.

Aimai, I think your analysis of Obama’s self-awareness is spot-on. It’s one reason that all the “messiah” crap made me laugh. It’s also why I think his losing the 2000 Congressional race to Bobby Rush was a good thing in terms of reminding him it’s not all smooth sailing.

And yeah, I think Obama neutralized Huntsman pretty well with that appointment. I’m really surprised he’s running at all this year. If he truly is trying to get visibility and name rec for 2016, being the Giuliani of 2012 doesn’t seem to be the right way of going about it.

If he truly is trying to get visibility and name rec for 2016, being the Giuliani of 2012 doesn’t seem to be the right way of going about it.

I am surprised at how benighted Huntsman is being, since he’s not stupid. I think aimai has the right of it with the inflated-self-worth hypothesis.

I also think Huntsman is betting that Sane Republicans might come back into fashion by 2016, and he’d be reasonably well positioned for that - if it weren’t for the teatard pandering he’s done this year.

If he truly is trying to get visibility and name rec for 2016, being the Giuliani of 2012 doesn’t seem to be the right way of going about it.

Republicans often pick candidates just because it’s their turn.  He’s getting in line.

I agree with aimai’s analysis.  Huntsman was the one candidate I feared before Obama chose him as ambassador.  I still thought Huntsman had a chance in 2016 if he played his cards right.  This, I did not see.  There really isn’t another explanation other than enormous hubris.

That’s some powerful endorse-fu. This should launch Huntsman ahead of everybody, as well as conquer space-time.

Is Jeb Jr. one of the grandkids HW referred to as “the little brown ones”?

He announced an endorsement from someone working on his campaign? Damn.

And from this I infer that he has not yet secured the endorsement of those working on his campaign.

*uh, “all those working on his campaign,” that is.

I’m sure he’ll get those, too, eventually.

And from this I infer that he has not yet secured the endorsement of [all] those working on his campaign.

Hey, a paycheck’s a paycheck these days.

To be fair, if he still has people working on his campaign, he’s ahead of the Newtster, right?