What does this mean for the progressive movement in this country?  Are a lot of people really liberals who just don't know it?  Are we really a center-right country like the pundits keep trying to assert? 

I would say that Huntsman does seem to me to represent that mythical average American, not quite liberal, not quite conservative.  Sort of like Obama.  In the end, I think this shows more about how people perceive theirs and the candidates ideologies, rather than reflecting actual alignments.

Americans perceive Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney, and Ron Paul as closest to themselves ideologically, and Michele Bachmann and Barack Obama as furthest away.

A USA Today/Gallup poll asked Americans to rate their own ideology -- and the ideology of the eight major presidential candidates -- on a 5-point scale with 1 being very liberal and 5 being very conservative. Americans' mean score on this scale is 3.3, meaning the average American is slightly to the right of center ideologically. Huntsman's score matches that at 3.3, but that mean rating excludes the 45% of Americans who did not have an opinion of Huntsman. Of the better known candidates, Romney's and Paul's 3.5 scores are closest to the average American's ideology.