"I'm beginning to understand how political communication works these days"

“It’s not so much where he’s at on the issues, it’s how he’s approaching it,” Russo said. “It comes across as too academic.”

Or occasionally as “arrogant,” said Brendan Steinhauser, federal and state campaigns director at FreedomWorks, the conservative think tank that has been a driving force behind the Tea Party movement.

“More than anything, it’s his personality,” Steinhauser said. Some of Huntsman’s quips during debates “weren’t really endearing to a lot of conservatives.”…

“Here’s a reality in my life,” Huntsman recently told CNN. “I give a major foreign policy speech on America’s role in the world in the 21st century, I get five hits on YouTube. [My daighters] put up this cornball video spoofing another candidate’s video, they get half a million views within 24 hours.”