Huntsman to skip Nevada debate in protest By Justin Sink - Tweet Jon Huntsman announced Friday that he will definitively be boycotting the Republican debate in Las Vegas next week in protest of Nevada's decision to move its caucus date to Jan. 14, throwing into doubt the traditional primary calendar led by Iowa and New Hampshire. 
 
 
 
 "If you are going to boycott something, boycott it," Hunstman said to WMUR. 
 
 
 
 His campaign said that instead, Huntsman will spend the evening campaigning in New Hampshire. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Huntsman has accused Romney of urging Nevada officials to take the earlier caucus date. Nevada, with its significant Mormon population, looks to be an easy win for the former Massachusetts governor, and a string of early victories could help Romney to cement the nomination. But the Romney camp has denied the allegations and said it hopes New Hampshire maintains its first-in-the-nation primary. 
 
 
 
 Michele Bachmann was reportedly also considering boycotting the debate, although her campaign later clarified that she would be in attendance. But she and Rick Santorum are considering joining Huntsman and Newt Gingrich, who have said they won't participate in the caucus itself unless New Hampshire and Iowa are accommodated. 
 
 Tweet View Comments "Next Tuesday, Gov. Huntsman will boycott the Nevada presidential debate, and instead hold a first-in-the-nation town hall meeting in New Hampshire, to discuss his bold plans to create jobs and reform America's foreign policy for the 21st century," said campaign manager Matt David in a statement. "While Mitt Romney's campaign has tried to game the system by encouraging Nevada to move to an earlier date, Gov. Huntsman is sticking up for the Granite State."Huntsman has accused Romney of urging Nevada officials to take the earlier caucus date. Nevada, with its significant Mormon population, looks to be an easy win for the former Massachusetts governor, and a string of early victories could help Romney to cement the nomination. But the Romney camp has denied the allegations and said it hopes New Hampshire maintains its first-in-the-nation primary.Michele Bachmann was reportedly also considering boycotting the debate, although her campaign later clarified that she would be in attendance. But she and Rick Santorum are considering joining Huntsman and Newt Gingrich, who have said they won't participate in the caucus itself unless New Hampshire and Iowa are accommodated. Source: 
 
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 Defense & Homeland Security | Energy & Environment | Healthcare | Finance & Economy | Technology | Foreign Policy | Labor | Transportation & Infrastructure ||||| MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. - Jon Huntsman will aim to give Mitt Romney a boost going into the final week before the South Carolina primary, endorsing his one-time rival in the hopes of helping him clinch the nomination. 
 
 The former Utah governor's announcement - set for 11 a.m. Monday in a speech at the Convention Center here - comes after several days of discussion within the campaign about the consequences of splitting moderate voters with Romney in Saturday's vote. Resigned to the fact that Huntsman wouldn't win, they believed that their votes would be better used helping Romney hold off his conservative challengers and wrap up the primary race early. 
 
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 But those conservative challengers greeted the Huntsman news with a shrug. 
 
 "Moderates are backing moderates," Rick Santorum said at a diner in Columbia Monday. "That's sort of the bottom line. No surprise there. Gov. Huntsman ran as a moderate, trying to compete for Gov. Romney for the establishment moderate vote. And Gov. Romney had a leg up on him being a solid moderate that the establishment could get behind. Gov. Huntsman wasn't able to crack through that. So I'm not surprised by that all, and I anticipated that actually sooner than today." 
 
 Newt Gingrich said he believed Huntsman’s exit helps him. 
 
 “It narrows down the field and I think the next five or six days are going to tell the tale,” Gingrich told POLITICO Monday morning. “If the conservatives consolidate, it’s clear that I’ll beat Romney.” 
 
 Gingrich warned against conservatives splitting the vote. 
 
 “The next five days are going to be wild. Really, the test here is really simple: if the conservatives consolidate, Romney loses decisively. If they don’t consolidate, it’s going to be very close,” Gingrich said. 
 
 Huntsman's decision to drop out comes less than a week after he claimed victory from his third-place finish in the New Hampshire primary, the contest he'd staked his candidacy on ever since entering the race last summer. Huntsman experienced a surge of support in the closing days before that vote, but he still fell well short of Ron Paul - and even further behind Romney, whom he'd sniped at in the closing days. 
 
 A source said that Huntsman's rationale for now backing Romney, who he has criticized for weeks on the campaign trail as lacking a "core," is that he didn't want to block the person best prepared in the field to beat Obama, and then to lead the country and grapple with the economy. 
 
 "Jon Huntsman is proud of the campaign he ran and the message of restoring trust in Washington," said a campaign official familiar with his thinking. "He didn't want to stand in the way of the candidate most likely to beat Barack Obama and turn the economy around. That's Mitt Romney." 
 
 Although Huntsman was only polling at about 5 percent in South Carolina, his voters are most likely to wind up with Romney. If either Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum makes a run at the frontrunner in the final week, those handful of votes that otherwise would've gone to Huntsman could prove pivotal.
– Jon Huntsman is skipping next week's debate in Las Vegas to protest Nevada's decision to move up its caucuses to January, reports the Hill. Instead, Huntsman will host a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire. The Huntsman camp accuses Mitt Romney of encouraging the state to shift its caucus date to "game the system." Romney is expected to win in Nevada, and his rivals fear that if he racks up enough early victories, he will lock up the nomination. Huntsman's daughters weigh in on their Twitter feed: "Dad boycotting Tuesday's Vegas debate to hold townhall in NH. Enough w/@mittromney and his campaign's attempts to rig the political process."