Almost everybody in the Republican field has had a shot at the "not Romney" poll surge. The newest guessing game seems to be over who's next, Rick Santorum or Jon Huntsman. Dick Armey, former House majority leader and leading conservative activist, gives the nod to Santorum:
While he stressed that any of the candidates still has a shot at uniting conservatives, Armey said Santorum, a former Senator from Pennsylvania, may be in the best position to do so.
"I think Rick Santorum has a great deal of appeal to a lot of folks like these activists. He just hasn't found a way to get traction but should he get traction, i think he could become more of a contender," Armey said.
And George Will thinks Jon Huntsman would be a lot less riskier choice than either Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich:
God has 10 commandments, Woodrow Wilson had 14 points, Heinz had 57 varieties, but Romney's economic platform has 59 planks — 56 more than necessary if you have low taxes, free trade and fewer regulatory burdens. Still, his conservatism-as-managerialism would be a marked improvement upon today's bewildered liberalism.
[. . .]
Gingrich, who would have made a marvelous Marxist, believes everything is related to everything else and only he understands how. Conservatism, in contrast, is both cause and effect of modesty about understanding society's complexities, controlling its trajectory and improving upon its spontaneous order.
[. . .]
Jon Huntsman inexplicably chose to debut as the Republican for people who rather dislike Republicans, but his program is the most conservative.
An interesting point, that last one. Huntsman endorsed Paul Ryan's plan, whereas Gingrich dismissed it as "rightwing social engineeering"), denounces No Child Left Behind (a program favored by both Romney and Gincrich) and even has the guts to include farm subsidies in his stand against corporate welfare.
