Ryan Lizza is reading too much into Huntsman’s recent “not a surrogate” comments:

While Huntsman obviously isn’t considering moving to Santorum, he’s another élite Republican who clearly has deep misgivings about Romney. Somewhat illogically, he went on to say that he still thought Romney was the “best person” to deal with the economy, but he insisted that he wasn’t a surrogate for him. “I’m looking at the political marketplace, and I’m saying this duopoly is tired and we’re stuck in a rut,” he said.

Huntsman has always had deep misgivings about Romney, which is why he ran against him and unrealistically expected to replace him as the establishment-backed candidate in the nominating contest, and his endorsement of Romney was a bloodless formal nod to the de facto front-runner at the time. Endorsing Romney was the logical, obvious choice for Huntsman once he realized that his own campaign was not going anywhere, but there was obviously no love lost between the two, and Huntsman has shown no interest in coming to Romney’s aid. Ultimately, Huntsman’s lack of enthusiasm for his former rival doesn’t mean very much. Indeed, it is better for Romney among party regulars that Huntsman’s support is tepid rather than strong. If Romney wants Republican elites and voters to give him strong backing, it wouldn’t be very useful for him to have Huntsman as a surrogate.