Video: Jon Huntsman on Face the Nation – 9/4/11

Former Utah Governor and Chinese Ambassador Jon Huntsman was also on Face the Nation this weekend with Bob Schieffer. Huntsman was asked to address polls showing his support hovering near 1% and whether or not he realistically has a shot in the race. Here is Huntsman’s entire interview.

Report from CBS News:

(CBS News) Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman defended his status at the back of the 2012 pack Sunday, calling early polls “absolute nonsense” and urging Americans to “stay tuned” for a serious Republican frontrunner to emerge.

Huntsman, appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” pointed to a series of past presidential candidates who flamed out despite early leads, and noted that “if we had gone by the polls back in 2008, Fred Thompson would be president, Howard Dean back in 2004,” Huntsman told CBS’ Bob Schieffer. “I believe we’ve already had about four frontrunners in the race so far.

“Stay tuned,” he added. “There’s a lot to play out.”

Nevertheless, a handful of recent polls place the former Utah governor firmly at the bottom of the pack with less than two percent support – calling into question his ability to break into the ranks of candidates like Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann.

Huntsman said his low polling numbers wouldn’t prompt him to shift to the right.

Huntsman is caught between a rock and a hard place. Currently Mitt Romney enjoys most of the moderate support Huntsman might get if Romney wasn’t in the race. Furthermore, any shift to the right at this point would be disingenuous and unlikely to sway primary voters looking for a “true conservative” by most definitions.

Unfortunately for Huntsman, he is the media’s favorite candidate but that popularity rating will not help him come caucus day.


Nate Ashworth

The Founder and Editor-In-Chief of Election Central. He's been blogging elections and politics for over a decade. He started covering the 2008 Presidential Election which turned into a full-time political blog in 2012 and 2016 that continues today.

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