Erica Grieder concludes her post on Huntsman this way:

Most of Mr Huntsman’s voters probably will go to Mr Romney, if not to Barack Obama or Ron Paul. It might be that Mr Huntsman would have had more success, if not for the fact that Mr Romney had a head start of four years and millions of dollars. But now it’s Mr Huntsman who has the head start for next time [bold mine-DL].

It’s correct that most of Huntsman’s voters will go to Romney, and they probably would have gone to him earlier had Huntsman not been in the race. I’m not sure that it follows that Huntsman would have done that much better if Romney had not been competing. Huntsman’s situation in early 2011 was in some ways the same as Romney’s four years before: very few people outside of his home state knew who he was, and he had acquired/cultivated a reputation as relative moderate. The lack of name recognition was something of a boon for Romney, since it allowed him to introduce him to a national audience as a completely ideologically different candidate from the one he had been in Massachusetts, but he was able to do that because he spent tens of millions of dollars of his own money in the effort. Huntsman wasn’t going to do that, and his father evidently wasn’t going to support the campaign with his wealth.

Even if Romney wasn’t in the race, I don’t see how Huntsman could have overcome his high unfavorability rating with Republicans. Among the 2012 candidates, Huntsman was consistently one of the least acceptable potential nominees. Romney was able to present himself as the conservative alternative in 2007-08 because he could and did use McCain and Giuliani as foils. When Romney was introduced to a national audience, it was as the movement conservative-approved anti-McCain. As preposterous as that was, the association worked to Romney’s advantage later. Huntsman has been introduced as the next McCain without any of the electoral success that McCain had. McCain benefited from his 2000 run by winning New Hampshire and serving as the main competitor against Bush, which made him the traditional heir apparent. Especially after the electoral disaster of 2006, there weren’t many Republicans interested in seeking a nomination that was marred by the legacy of Bush, and McCain was able to eke out a nomination against a lacking, divided field.

Huntsman will not come into the 2016 or 2020 cycle as the runner-up or anything like it, but as the third fourth earliest dropout from the 2012 race. That puts him in roughly the same position that Giuliani was in in 2008, except that his overall support will have proven to be weaker than Giuliani’s. Unlike McCain, Huntsman would be likely to face a host of competitive candidates in future cycles, as many of this election’s fantasy candidates could be ready to run in another four or eight years, and some of the relatively new rising stars in the party will offer fresh alternatives. All of this assumes that Romney loses in the fall or selects a VP with no ambitions of higher office. Obviously, a Romney victory closes the window for Huntsman and many other would-be presidential aspirants for close to a decade.