About former Utah governor and obvious presidential aspirant Jon Huntsman, Jennifer Rubin asks “Why is Huntsman running for President?” citing among a few examples:

He also earned kudos from environmentalist groups like the Sierra Club for joining the Western Climate Initiative — a move that outraged some Republicans in the state’s Legislature and prompted a resolution condemning the impact it might have on small businesses.

Here’s my take on that. In October of (I think) 2007 I was asked to share a stage at the Utah Farm Bureau’s annual meeting with Huntsman’s ‘climate’ advisor. He, and she, were indeed dogmatists on the issue and the agenda. The governor had been refusing to even meet with UFB on his climate policy which, as elsewhere if not more so, was a mishmash of left-wing wish-list items (which is also why the left pushes the ‘climate’ excuse so hard…that’s all it is, the latest excuse; it certainly isn’t about climate since no one actually claims their schemes would detectably impact the climate).

Huntsman had ridden headlines like one I was handed when I arrived which had run a few months before that event, the print edition of which read something like “Utah warming second-fastest on earth.” And he participated in creating others. And others still. And bringing in the fox to guard the economic henhouse… and even going activist afterward to boast of it. All like Tim Pawlenty, among others, also did in presumably burnishing his ‘green’ chops for a future run.

Not real great. But, hey, if Newt can overcome sitting on that couch with Pelosi… If.

Speaking afer the advisor I showed slides with snaps posted at the invaluable www.SurfaceStations.org revealing that Utah’s warming just might have something to do with moving their surface-based thermometers to parking lots. Among other points.

By coincidence or not, finally, the next day, the governor changed course and called the Farm Bureau in to speak. He remained bad on the policy, however. So he got slapped down by his legislature.

Rubin opines that Mr. Huntsman is sort of like John McCain without the war record, all the way down to numerous personnel hires. You might (not) be surprised to learn that his chief advisor (that’s a 2009 article, but it’s still the case) happens to be the longtime chief advisor for the last Republican nominee, who dogmatically and often quite nastily pushed his global warming orthodoxy on Americans. So speaking of vehicles, the global warming movement seems to have found its new Republican host organism pretty quickly after the whole 2008 unpleasantness.

This sequence explains a lot about Mr. Huntsman, in my mind. And about his candidacy. In a way, he already lost to Obama in 2008. Let’s move on.