Huntsman drops out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination

Here's the story, courtesy of the New York Times.  As the story puts it:

A third-place finish in the New Hampshire primary last week failed to jump start his flagging candidacy, aides said, and his campaign limped into South Carolina with little money. Mr. Huntsman has spent days pondering his future in the race, but aides said that he concluded he was unlikely to topple Mitt Romney or match the momentum of his Republican rivals in the conservative Southern primary.

Looks like Huntsman will endorse Romney tomorrow.  Huntsman's campaign never got off the ground because he fundamentally misjudged the mood of the Republican primary electorate.  He  first sought to run as a moderate Republican who was willing to make accommodations to the left when it came embracing both global warming and civil unions for homosexual couples.  Both of these positions, for a variety of reasons, alienated key segments of the GOP base. By the time Huntsman realized that he had to emphasize his conservative positions in order to have a chance to stay in the race, it was too late.  He was never able to build a narrative regarding his conservative accomplishments as governor of Utah that was sufficient to get him needed electoral support.  He never managed to be more than a blip on the radar.  So, we are now at the point, as Robert Stacy McCain puts it, to say "Good-Bye, Governor Asterisk."