. . . he would say, “I was for Huntsman before Huntsman was cool.”
As Conn noted yesterday, a handful of prominent conservatives journalists such as George Will, Erick Erickson, James Pethokoukis, and Ross Douthat are taking a second look at Jon Huntsman’s struggling campaign for president. Today, Huntsman is slated to meet with a group of conservative bloggers in Washington, encouraging them to give him a second look.
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Hyped in the mainstream media, most conservatives wrote off Huntsman’s campaign because of his bland personality and moderate appeal.
In August, however, Dougherty was one of the few conservative journalists to take the Huntsman candidacy seriously, sitting down with him for an American Conservative magazine profile that explored the former Utah governor’s conservative record.
“For the past two decades a “moderate” Republican was one who generally didn’t side with his party on three issues: taxes, guns and abortion.” Dougherty wrote, calling him the “No-Drama Conservative,” “Huntsman’s record on those isn’t just to the right of other moderates, it is to the right of most conservatives.”
Now at Business Insider, Dougherty writes under more sensational headlines such as “Hey Republicans! There’s One Real Conservative Left To Vote For And It’s Jon Huntsman” and “The Biggest Myth About The Jon Huntsman Campaign.”
“Conservatives Discover An Inconvenient Truth About Jon Huntsman,” Dougherty wrote yesterday featuring his conservative colleagues that are warming up to the former Chinese ambassador. “On almost any issues, Huntsman has been more consistently conservative than either Romney or Gingrich.”
