Huntsman Joins GOP Field

AP at Denver Post:

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is joining the fast-growing pack of Republicans battling to take on President Barack Obama.
Huntsman, who was Obama's ambassador to China until a month ago, will make his formal announcement next Tuesday—with the Statue of Liberty as the backdrop, his campaign team said. Though he served in Washington for three Republican presidents, he faces a challenge in making himself known nationally and winning over GOP primary voters.
Still, the fact that he's entering the race shows the turmoil that still fills the Republican field as time ticks down to the first 2012 primaries and caucuses.

Unfortunately, Huntsman has joined in with the other GOP candidates who are fiscally crazy, as the Frum Forum highlights:

The same fate seems to be overtaking Jon Huntsman, alas. Having bucked the party on greenhouse gases and same-sex unions, Huntsman has signed up for 100 percent endorsement of the Ryan plan.
I can see the logic. Genuflecting at the Ryan altar is deemed inescapable and essential for credibility in 2012. A social conservative like a Mike Huckabee might (barely) evade the obligation, but a libertarian-stye candidate like Huntsman cannot and dare not. To the extent that Huntsman has his eye on a second run in 2016 — well by then the Ryan plan will be forgotten by the general electorate even as it pays dividend in continuing fiscal credibility with the party faithful. So: I get it.
The trouble is, however, that this solution defines the problem in purely party-political terms. The Ryan plan answers a narrow Republican concern: how do we push taxes even lower in the face of the impending retirement of the baby boom). It disregards the broader national concern: how can we sustain and enhance the standard of living of the American middle class against the downward trend in middle-class incomes of the past dozen years? The Ryan plan tragically abdicates this question. (emphasis mine)

This is exactly right.  The Ryan plan sacrifices the middle class and working class for the benefit of the ultra-wealthy.  This isn't responsible governance, it is idiotic cruelty toward the vast majority of Americans.  Some middle class people may welcome this freedom from "socialism," but I bet they won't be too excited when they find out what it actually costs them.