Huntsman joins GOP race for White House

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is joining the pack of Republicans battling to take on President Barack Obama.

Huntsman, who was Obama's ambassador to China until a month ago, will make his formal announcement next Tuesday -- with the Statue of Liberty as the backdrop, his campaign team said. Though he served in Washington for three Republican presidents, he faces a challenge in making himself known nationally and winning over GOP primary voters.

Other GOP candidates were hard at it yesterday after their first big debate the night before, keeping up their verbal pounding of Obama.

Front-runner Mitt Romney campaigned at a family-owned hardware story in Derry and declared, "You can't blame George Bush anymore. President Obama is going to have to take responsibility for the fact that we're still in a very troubled economy."

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty had to be goaded to repeat his criticism of Romney's health care plan as "Obamneycare," a term he coined conflating Obama and Romney's health care records.

And former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, stopping by a breakfast for small businesses, tried to keep the focus on Obama and his stewardship of the economy, not his own faltering campaign.

Huntsman, meanwhile, is just getting under way.

"I intend to announce my candidacy for the presidency of the United States of America a week from today," he said during a talk about China policy in New York with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

His campaign will begin in earnest at the northern New Jersey park where President Ronald Reagan began his 1980 White House run, according to advisers who noted that he had worked as a staff assistant in the Reagan White House.

From the Statue of Liberty, Huntsman plans to travel to New Hampshire and to Florida. He also plans stops in his home state of Utah and in the early caucus state of Nevada.