Huntsman campaign removes attack ads, websites critical of Romney

Shortly after news broke that Jon Huntsman was dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing former rival Mitt Romney for president, attack ads and websites critical of the former Massachusetts governor began to disappear from Huntsman campaign website.

A Huntsman spokesman told The New York Times that a “substantial” amount of content had been removed from the website. That substantial amount seems exclusively to be content critical of Romney, upon whom Huntsman regularly focused his attacks throughout his campaign.

{mosads}Of particular note, a number of YouTube videos that garnered a fair amount of media attention during Huntsman’s run (even though they didn’t seem to have much of an impact on his poll numbers or fundraising) are gone. One of the departed Web videos featured a mechanical monkey doing backflips on one side of the screen alongside clips of Romney making apparently contradictory statements on issues including abortion and on an Ohio bill curtailing union bargaining rights.

The campaign also removed its 10kbet.com which hit Romney for offering to make a $10,000 bet with Rick Perry during a Republican presidential debate.

The disappearance of those videos falls in line with Huntsman’s somewhat surprising decision to endorse Romney. Huntsman’s endorsement flies in the face of the strong criticism the former Utah governor leveled at Romney.

A Huntsman staffer said Huntsman “didn’t want to stay in the way of a candidate [best] prepared to beat Obama and turn around [the] economy.”

But the Huntsman campaign’s efforts to scrub its site of items critical of Romney didn’t escape the notice of Democrats. The Democratic National Committee quickly blasted out an email last night highlighting statements Huntsman made criticizing Romney.

“While the Huntsman campaign tries to rewrite history, let us remind you of some of Jon Huntsman’s greatest hits against Mitt Romney,” the email read.