Haley Impressed with Huntsman

Huffington Post reports:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley came away impressed from her meeting with potential Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, but cautioned that the discussion was too short to fully assess the former U.S. Ambassador to China and governor of Utah.

“It was a very impressive conversation and it looks like he’s going to be a serious candidate if he gets in, ” Haley, a Republican elected last fall, told HuffPost after a Republican party dinner the night before the state convention meeting.

“He was great,” Haley said of Huntsman. “What I loved was his experience that he had in seeing China and how they’re off the charts and running fast and the passion they have for economic development. He knows that we can have that here in the United States. He wants to go and look at the financial aspect of where we are in our country and he understands it’s about reducing the debt.”

But Haley hesitated to say whether Huntsman, who is more socially liberal than many of the other top-tier Republican hopefuls for the party’s nomination in 2012, is conservative enough to win in South Carolina.

“You know it’s hard to tell. When they come and sit down for five or ten minutes it’s not enough time,” she said. “It’s enough to get you to know their personality and their energy level and their basic core issues, but you really have to hear them. You’ve got to get some more basic information on them.”

“So it will take a while to kind of go through where they are,” she added.