Do you honestly not believe that running against your boss would hamstring you in the primary and the general election?

You wouldn't think it would tie some forms of attack in the general election?

You would not think it would cause him to lose some primary support for he is see working with the rival, the enemy, or the devil (depending on which republican voter we are talking to).

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He does get much play for in the primary there are two groups of people.
1) The very polarized die hard Republicans (and Democrats in other elections). These people are not typical Republicans but instead fervent believers who hold very strong beliefs as well unwilling to change their mind on these strongly hold beliefs.

Jon Huntsman has made several mistakes for this group
A) Working for the "enemy", this maybe be fine in another time but right now to the die hard Republicans Obama is the enemy and not merely the opposition.
B) He has attacked a view which is strongly attached view to many die hard republicans on some issues such as gay civil unions, evolution, climate change, china, etc
C) He has not offered a different position than the rest of the field on the renaming strong beliefs. He has been a very mellow guy and the only "out there" thing he has done is on his tax plan. While these die hard republicans are "high information" voters compared to the general public they don't really care about wonkish details and thus will judge politicians on gut instinct and feelings instead of wonkish details. He is to use a term that Random Thoughts like "Republican Lite" and for a die hard why choose "Republican Lite" that has a bad aftertase (for the true believers) when you have people such as Bachman, Perry, Cain, Santorum, etc.
D) Huntsman isn't a very good campaigner

2) The other group of primaries are the low information voter. These people don't often vote in primaries (but they have a greater chance of doing so in the general election) even so they do have some effect in polling.

A) Jon Huntsman doesn't have name recognition
B) Polls lead polls and polls lead attention. Get a higher polling number and you get more attention. Polls also lead to more debate invites, more media attention, and more money. See Gary Johnson and to an even greater extent Buddy Roemer.
C) Jon Huntsman only focused on New Hampshire and thus got no attention in states such as Iowa. Both Iowa and New Hampshire allow you to campaign with low amounts of money due to the fact there is such a small amount of voters in these caucuses/primaries and you don't have to buy a lot of expensive tv time.
D) Jon Huntsman didn't raise a lot of money (and a good amount of the money he did raised came from himself)

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If anything Huntsman has gotten a huge amount of media attention that is unconnected to his actual performance in any of the measurable metrics.