“I think his difficulty has been in finding his voice, and I don’t think he’s yet figured out who he is,” Arlinghaus noted. “He talks in a way that a lot of less conservative Republicans like, and yet all the ads on TV from his super PAC, and some of the messages in the newspaper are all about ‘you know, jeez, I’m just as conservative as these guys.’ And I think it’s a marketing issue that you need to figure out who exactly you’re trying to talk to and talk to them and not have mixed messages.”

New Hampshire-based political consultant Patrick Hynes called Huntsman’s strategy in the state “a mess.”

“You would think at this late stage of the game he would be positioning himself for the moderate, undeclared voters who will participate in the open primary. This universe of voters is still up for grabs. Instead, though, Huntsman sees this as the right time to dart rightward in a field filled with conservatives. It is a very bizarre strategy,” Hynes said.

“He’s a wonderful guy, he was a very successful governor … but he hasn’t really had a consistent discernible theme, and I think that has hampered with him,” echoed Steve Duprey, New Hampshire’s Republican National Committeeman and a Romney supporter.