Dear Jon Huntsman, We Don’t Deserve You

This past week, citizens of the granite state of New Hampshire did a great job in reinforcing the state’s nickname: in a blockheaded, nose-picking Cro-Magnon fashion, nearly 40% of New Hampshirites traveled en masse to their polling stations and voted for Mitt Romney. In a distant second place was Ron Paul, resident libertarian crank whose absurd vision of the future rivals that of a Dali painting. And in a typically meek manner, Jon Huntsman finally poked his silvery head of hair in the upper echelon of GOP candidates with 17% of the New Hampshire vote.

In Huntsman’s subsequent speech, he vowed that his campaign would “go south” from New Hampshire. While he may have meant South Carolina, the next stop on the conservative candidates’ tour de force, another—and more accurate—interpretation would be that he was referring to the direction of his future support in the polls.

What modest “momentum” Huntsman gained—if it can even be called that—in the already fiercely independent state of New Hampshire was not nearly enough to catapult him into the frontrunner status he will need in order to successfully navigate the waters of the snake handling, reason loathing, and science shunning states of South Carolina and Florida that await next in the GOP primaries.

And let’s be honest: even if Huntsman had placed second and managed 20% or more of New Hampshire voters, he wouldn’t stand a chance in the vaudevillian spectacle that is the GOP primary race. Despite the fact that 2008 Obama campaign manager David Plouffe dubbed Huntsman as the sole Republican who made him “a wee bit queasy” about Obama’s 2012 race, Huntsman is sadly incapable of garnering a modicum of support. Here’s why:

1. He speaks a language other than English—and it’s not even Spanish

Adding Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese Hokkein to his already impressive resume via a two-year mission trip to Taiwan, many Americans view Huntsman’s linguist leanings as a threat to American culture and the English language. He even has a Chinese name: Hóng Bópéi. In a country where fewer than 10% of Americans are fluent in a second language (compared to Europe’s near 50% proportion), being bilingual will grant you few favors. As one of the GOP’s more paranoid members stated in a blog post, “If he were to run the country… we will be speaking Chinese by the end of his term.” If only.

2. He believes in science

Taking to Twitter after Rick Perry’s dismissal of evolution as “just a theory that’s out there” and climate change as data manipulation for dollars, Huntsman made the characteristically innocuous comment that he believed in evolution and trusted scientists on global warming.

He was even willing to let others call him crazy for it, and rest assured they did: 4 in 10 Americans believe in strict creationism and the majority of those believers identify themselves as Republicans. And as the percentage of Americans concerned about global warming continues to drop to abysmal lows, Huntsman has only succeeded in pushing himself further toward the lonely outskirts of the bell curve.