Another Hat in the GOP Ring
I will admit, I didn't see this coming.
Via ABC News: ABC News exclusive: Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson announces 2024 presidential run:
“I have made a decision, and my decision is I’m going to run for president of the United States,” Hutchinson told Karl. “While the formal announcement will be later in April, in Bentonville [Arkansas], I want to make it clear to you, Jonathan, I am going to be running. And the reason is, I’ve traveled the country for six months, I hear people talk about the leadership of our country. I’m convinced that people want leaders that appeal to the best of America, and not simply appeal to our worst instincts.”
Rather than engage in a lengthy commentary I will sum this up as follows: he will be another single-digit blip in the polls to compete with Niki Haley and others for last place. I just don’t see how it will be anything other than that.
And before you check your calendars, yesterday was 4/1. Today is 4/2.
BTW, this will not help with a huge chunk of the GOP base:
Karl pressed Hutchinson on whether he believes Trump should drop out of the race now that he’s been indicted.
“I do,” Hutchinson said, standing by the position he took before Trump was charged. “I mean, first of all, the office is more important than any individual person. And so for the sake of the office of the presidency, I do think that’s too much of a sideshow and distraction and he needs to be able to concentrate on his due process and there is a presumption of innocence.”
I think Hutchinson thinks he can occupy the non-Trump lane, but I think he needs to call John Kasich and ask how that went for him.
I guess there is some logic to thinking that there is a chance Trump has to exit, so why not position oneself for that possibility? But, I have to admit such an exit seems highly unlikely at this point. Moreover, the obvious beneficiary of such an eventuality would be Ron DeSantis, not Asa Hutchinson.
ABC news is reporting that Asa Hutchinson, former Governor of Arkansas, has thrown his hat in the ring to run for the GOP U.S. Presidential nomination.
In an interview he stated: “…we can’t set aside what our Constitution requires — which is electing a new leader for our country…”.
Heads Up Asa!
The U.S. Constitution does not require the election of a new President in November of 2024. Joe Biden can run for reelection to a second four year term.
What else don’t you know about Our Great Charter?
At least Kasich won the Ohio primary. I don’t think Hutch will even be competitive in the Arkansas one. For that matter, it’s highly unlikely the current governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, will endorse–or even pay attention to–Hutchinson.
I know that every time someone launches an apparently quixotic bid, people speculate it’s to advance a personal brand or whatever. But there’s always the possibility the person is deluded enough to believe they can win. I think that’s true a lot more than the pundits acknowledge.
Asa Hutchinson, like many in the GOP, is clinging to the belief that the Jeb Bush, John Kasich, James Joyner wing of the GOP is making a comeback soon.
He’s wrong. The GOP is now MAGA, and that’s not going to change, whether or not Trump is at the helm. The base of the GOP is nihilistic and wants to burn it all down unless they win every election. Every election won by a Dem will be “stolen”. That’s the new normal, and I don’t see it changing any time soon.
It’s quiet possible that Hutchinson is fully aware he has no chance to win, but thinks there needs to be a Republican candidate actively attacking Trump. And since no one else has stepped up, I guess it has to be him.
I’ve said this before, but if Trump is the nominee he’ll lose. If he isn’t the nominee, he’ll run third party and lose, or he’ll sabotage the Repub nominee, who will also lose.
Either way the Democrats win.
@Kylopod & @EddieInCA:
I, for one, welcome Asa Hutchinson’s quixotic bid for the Republican nomination for POTUS. Yes, Hutchinson is deluded about his chances of winning over the MAGA-fied GOP of today, but Don Quixote was deluded as well and still the hero of the La Mancha story. It’s a bit admirable to have someone out there publicly seeking to right the unrightable wrongs and dream the impossible dreams.
Counter to “Murc’s Law” where only Democrats have agency or any causal impact on American politics, I believe only Republicans have any role to play in either righting the GOP ship or accelerating its demise so another party take its place as the more traditional, conservative opposition party necessary for a well functioning politics in the US. If liberalism is to defeat authoritarianism, I think it is necessary that Republican pols who want the GOP to appeal to the best of us have to at least try to seize the megaphone from Trump and DeSantis. Democrats calling for the same thing can only be counterproductive in light of the “own the libs” driving force of Republican partisanship.
I suppose some has to try, but sadly, there’s no real or serious non-Trump lane in the modern GQP, because a book banning, gay bashing fascist by any other name is still a book banning, gay bashing fascist.
Drama Queen Donnie and Ron DeFascist are sucking almost all Republican support. Then you have Trump’s bootlicking sycophants Mike Pence and Nikki Haley polling at negligible numbers. Actual non-Trumpers might as well be polling at 0%.
The Republican Party has a Trump lane and a Trump-wannabee lane. That’s good news for Democrats electorally and very bad news for the US, for democracy, and for the world.
I cannot imagine a low name-recognition Arkansas governor ever getting a major-party nomination out of a crowded field of contenders. Could never happen. [checks notes] Uh, nvmd.
@Joe: Snark aside, the 1992 race was driven by the fact that almost all of the big names in the Democratic Party declined to run, because they saw Bush as unbeatable after Desert Storm.
I’d love to know how he feels about his successor’s recent signing of a bill loosening restrictions on child labor.
I was in politics long enough to know that you don’t write someone off until you start seeing what’s happening in contests, but I am not putting any money on this candidacy.
BTW, this will not help with a huge chunk of the GOP base:
Karl pressed Hutchinson on whether he believes Trump should drop out of the race now that he’s been indicted.
Since “Hutch” is making this announcement on ABC it’s a good bet not many of the GOP base will even find out about his candidacy till some dunce at Fox mentions it.
No, Hutchinson doesn’t stand a chance, but they said the same thing about Eugene McCarthy and after the NH primary we saw a badly damaged LBJ drop out. Trump of course, won’t drop out, but if he doesn’t win the early contests going away, the nomination for him won’t be a forgone conclusion. And then there is the tale of Ed Muskie…
I would be surprised if there aren’t some intense conversations going on in the DeSantis home right now, along the lines of “Maybe those people urging us to wait until ’28 are right.” It would be insane for him to run next year unless Trump drops dead. If he loses the primary to Trump, as is likely, he’ll be seriously damaged goods next time around: the next Ted Cruz. In the unlikely event he wins, hardcore Trump supporters will stay home come the general. They and Trump will probably openly campaign against him. They hate “RINOs” more than they hate Democrats. There are simply no realistic scenarios in which he could expect to win the primary and go on to take the general.
Trump has almost exactly the same support base today as he did in 2016. It’s impossible to imagine anything Trump could do (short of dying) that would persuade them to abandon him. Either he will be the candidate if he’s alive, or he’ll tear the party apart. I’d welcome the latter option with glee, but it’s hard to believe DeSantis is stupid enough to risk it.
@Ken_L: DeFascist can’t turn back now without looking pathetically and fatally weak, can he? If he had said two months ago he wasn’t running for president, he would have retained future viability. To walk away now would look as if DeSantis couldn’t handle the heat, that the tiniest amount of national scrutiny ran him out of the race. And if you can’t stand up to Trump, how can you stand up to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping?
@Ken_L: I get what you’re saying, but there’s just so much riding on DeSantis’s putative run that he’d risk serious blowback if he bows out now. It’s also far from clear that if he were to bow out, and then Trump became the nominee and lost in the general (or, alternately, won *shudder*), DeSantis would become the heir apparent in the next go-round. Sometimes you have to strike when the iron is hot.
Besides, you seem to be assuming that that DeSantis is all cold calculation, when there’s evidence he’s bought into his own hype. There was a report last year about how DeSantis in private has called Trump a moron. That’s hardly a surprise, but what I found revealing was what he sees as Trump’s weak spot:
In other words, he thinks he can sell himself to Trumpists as a better Trump. That suggests that even if DeSantis’s chances are as poor as you think they are, he might not realize it.
It goes back to a point I tried to make at the start of this thread: a lot of people fail to grasp the level of hubris of most politicians. I’m half convinced that in order to run for president, you have to be at least slightly insane. Earlier, we alluded to Bill Clinton’s seemingly unlikely rise in 1992. Additional examples include Jimmy Carter in 1976, Obama in 2008, and of course Trump in 2016. These are all very different people under a very different set of circumstances. But they all entered a presidential race at a time when there was an overwhelming conventional narrative that they faced long odds. Trump may have initially entered without any intention of winning (at least that’s the story we’ve heard), but the others probably thought they had at least a fighting chance. It’s kind of like those rags-to-riches tales that are always getting thrown at us to prove anyone can make it big; the stories of candidates no one thought could win help fuel long-shot candidacies. There isn’t always an ulterior motive. And DeSantis’s chances still look a lot better than any of the other non-Trump Republicans. So it’s not like his run would be totally ridiculous and pointless like we assume about Hutchinson. There’s at least a sliver of a case to be made, and even if you are not convinced of it, that doesn’t mean he isn’t.