The Jon Huntsman campaign limped off the starting line. He promised a "civil" campaign when Republicans were angry at the sitting president.
He seemed to be cooperating with the mainstream media's attempt to paint him as a 'moderate Republican', even though he had one of the most conservative records in the race. Outside of New Hampshire he hasn't registered in the polls.
But now he seems to have finally found a new angle of attack on the president, one that he seems uniquely qualified to deliver. And the campaign is debuting it in a new stump speech in New Hampshire today. Here is a section.
The American people have lost trust, first and foremost, in the president.
A president who, rather than focusing like a laser on fixing our economic core, wasted an entire year jamming through a health care plan the American people didn’t ask for and can’t afford.
A president who brazenly ignored the bold and creative proposals put forth by his own bipartisan deficit commission – Simpson-Bowles – whose failure to deal honestly with our debt caused the first-ever downgrade in our nation’s credit rating.
A president who has employed the same crony politics he once decried; who has used public dollars to pay off campaign contributors like Solyndra; and who has been willing, through his National Labor Relations Board, to sacrifice American jobs to appease union allies.
This is exactly the kind of "whistleblower" message he could and probably should have delivered at the foot of the Statue of Liberty when his campaign debuted this summer. In any case, this is the closing argument.
With two very weak front-runners, there is a small opening for Huntsman to run through and seize this nomination. At this time in the last election cycle, Rudy Giuliani was leading the polls.
Successful campaigns put together a man and a message, with the mood of the country. Jon Huntsman's team is betting that people are tired of pinning "Hope" with a capital "H" on the president. They simply want a chief executive they can trust.