Is Jon Huntsman a phony or do I just perceive it that way?

In the last twenty-four hours, I have seen four different news reports touting the great moment that Jon Huntsman had in the debate Sunday morning when he upbraided Mitt Romney for criticizing Huntsman's service to America as Obama's ambassador to China. Rachel Maddow called it masterful. john Heilmann in New York Magazine described Huntsman's statement as "terrific". Other reports talked about how the crowd loved what Huntsman said. The problem, of course, is that I saw both the Saturday night debate where Romney discussed Huntsman's service as ambassador to China and the Sunday morning debate where Huntsman delivered the reply that he and his staff worked up overnight. The truth is that Huntsman's reply was dishonest since it mischaracterized what Romney said. It was also completely phony.

Let's look at what happened. Towards the end of the Saturday debate, the subject of trade with China came up. Huntsman spoke about how important the relationship between the USA and China will be in the 21st century and about his superior knowledge in that regard. He also took a swipe at Romney who has called for taking action to force China to stop stealing American intellectual property, to stop China from hacking into American computers and stealing secrets and to stop China from manipulating its currency in order to steal jobs from America for Chinese workers. Huntsman said that rather than making threats like those emanating from Romney, America should talk more to China just as we have been doing in the fear that otherwise we would see a trade war.

Romney then got a short response. Mitt made clear that he believes that talking alone has accomplished nothing. The Chinese continue to steal our inventions, hack into our computers and manipulate their currency. Romney said that he would take action once in office to stop the Chinese from continuing on this course. He also said that there would be no trade war since the trade between the USA and China is many times more important to the Chinese than it is to America. Finally, Romney pointed out that talking alone just does not work. Indeed, Huntsman spent two years as Obama's ambassador in China and the point man for this failed strategy. the other candidates did not waste their time on such failed Obama strategies but were back home trying to elect Republicans to change that strategy.

So, did Romney criticize Huntsman for his service to America? No, not even close. But that did not stop Huntsman. Sunday morning, after twelve hours of preparation, Huntsman ignored the first question to him and instead announced that he took offense at Romney's attacks on his service to the country. Huntsman then wrapped himself in the flag and said how nothing Romney had mentioned would stop Huntsman from continuing in that service. He also brought up the fact that he has two sons serving in the military and implied that Romney had somehow also criticized their service. It was revolting.

My reaction on hearing Huntsman's speech at the debate was that he hade reached a new low in being oily and dishonest. It was worse than those ads that quote half a sentence while omitting the rest so as to change the meaning of the quote. Here there wasn't even half a sentence uttered by Romney that Huntsman was criticizing. No, Huntsman had made up the entire thing. Of course, since the two debates were hours apart and since the audience did not overlap for the most part, Huntsman apparently felt it was no problem to just make these things up.

I have to believe that those in the media who are praising Huntsman now are doing so because they believe it hurts Romney which in turn helps Obama. Rachel Maddow may be a hard core leftist, but she is not dumb. She knows better. My guess is that she even watched some of the debates. She must be carrying water for Obama here.

In any event, I hope that Huntsman finishes way down in the New Hampshire results. It would be nice to think of him out of the race. Maybe he could have lunch with Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann and they could reminisce.
Then again, my guess is that both Cain and Bachmann have more class than to be seen with Huntsman.