“The reason I will never, ever support Jon Huntman is simple: While serving as the United States Ambassador to China, our greatest strategic adversary, Jon Huntsman began plotting to run against the President of the United States. This calls into question his loyalty not just to the President of the United States, but also his loyalty to his country over his own naked ambition.

“It does not matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat. Party is beside the point here. When the President of the United States sends you off to be Ambassador to our greatest strategic adversary in the world, you don’t sit around contemplating running against the very same President you serve. It begs the question of did you fully carry out your duties as Ambassador or let a few things slip along the way hoping to damage the President? Likewise, it begs the question of whether our relations with China have suffered because the President felt like he could not trust his own Ambassador?…

“Politics is supposed to stop at the waters edge, though that happens less these days. But politics sure as hell should have stopped at Peking (editorial note: I always refuse to say Beijing because that’s what the Chicoms want us to use). And it didn’t. This disloyalty should not be rewarded by any patriot.”

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“Jon Huntsman is the latest 2012 hopeful to dine with Mike Huckabee, the 2008 Iowa caucus winner who has said he’ll decide this summer whether or not to throw his hat in the ring himself, a source familiar with the meeting said…

“Word of the meeting was first reported by CNN, which also noted that Huntsman will be the latest possible contender to meet with the man many Republican elites would like to see run, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The two are set to sit down in the coming week, CNN reported.”

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“Mormons make up about 2 percent of the U.S population, but they’re closer to 30 percent of the Republican presidential primary field, where two clean-cut, handsome, moderate, millionaire former governors — Romney and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman — appear to be seeking the nomination. The biographical similarities between the two men are good for an easy joke – one prominent South Carolina Republican referred to them as the ‘Doublemint Twins’ – but they are taking sharply different approaches to this state, and to a question haunting their supporters: Will the Christian conservative backbone of the Republican electorate in South Carolina and other states support a Mormon? And as Romney seeks to keep a deliberate distance from the state, Huntsman is ostentatiously waving him in, and telling him the water’s fine…

“Romney is expected here May 21 for the first time in more than 200 days, and has been playing an intricate waiting game in the two heavily evangelical early states, South Carolina and Iowa – a game of dampening expectations partly based on perceived resistance to his faith.

“Huntsman appears determined to explode Romney’s careful game. And Huntsman’s key local consultant, Richard Quinn, has for weeks been delightedly suggesting that Romney’s faith isn’t a handicap but simply a crutch disguising other weaknesses.

“‘Maybe that’s his excuse — maybe he’s going to say we’re prejudiced against Mormons,’ Quinn said recently. ‘I think it’s kind of a little bit of a slander about South Carolina that we’re going to rule out people that aren’t quite Anglo-Saxon Protestants.'”

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