OK, Now THAT'S Some Sweet Shrewd Strategy

Obama has just appointed the Mormon, Republican Governor of Utah (a millionaire businessman, fluent in Mandarin) to be the Ambassador to China.

What a fantastically shrewd move. Just as the last echos of the words of RNC Chairman Michael Steele were beginning to fade — that Massachusetts Mormon Mitt Romney didn't get the Republican nomination to run for President over John McCain because Republicans don't trust Mormons — Obama comes along and lassoes one of the nation's top moderate conservatives and Republican rising stars into his own circle, and gives Mormons (who have huge constituencies in the swing states of Nevada and Colorado) something to think about before they cast their straight-line Republican vote the next time they go to the polls.

Says Al Giordano:

The appointment of Huntsman is thus, politically, a slam dunk. When GOP primary voters inevitably reject Romney once again in the 2012 primaries and caucuses outside of the Mountain West, the resentment - already boiling after last year's adventures in presidential politics - among rank-and-file Mormons that the party to whom they've given so much still doesn't really want them in the Master's house rather than the servant's quarters, will sting. Meanwhile, another of their prominent citizens will likely still be Obama's man in Beijing, proof that somebody in American politics isn't dissing the LDS and its members. And in key swing states like Nevada and Colorado, LDS members are legion.