The Republican primary field got a little bigger over the weekend as former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson tossed his hat into the ring. Hutchinson made an immediate play for the Trump-skeptical wing of the GOP by calling on Donald Trump to withdraw from the race.
Announcing his candidacy on ABC’s “This Week,” Hutchinson said that he was running because “I believe that I am the right time for America, the right candidate for our country and its future. I’m convinced that people want leaders that appeal to the best of America and not simply appeal to our worst instincts.”
He added that Trump should drop out, saying “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.”
If you aren’t familiar with Asa Hutchinson, you aren’t alone. I mean, he’s no Vivek Ramaswamy (whoever that is), but he’s not exactly a household name either. I’ve heard Hutchinson’s name, but I wouldn’t say I’m familiar with him, his career, or his policy positions.
In my book, Hutchinson’s lack of fame may be a good thing. In today’s GOP, fame is typically reserved for those like Ron DeSantis and Marjorie Taylor Greene who engage in over-the-top, self-serving behavior for the Fox News features. If I don’t know much about Hutchinson but he was still a popular governor who won reelection with a 39-point landslide in a bad year for Republcans, he must be doing something right.
So, as is often the case when I’m not familiar with something, I set out to familiarize myself. Hutchinson was born in Arkansas in 1950 and is currently 72. That makes him slightly younger than both Donald Trump, 76, and Joe Biden, 80. As they might say in Arkansas, however, none of the three is a spring chicken.
Hutchinson earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Bob Jones University in 1972 and a law degree from the University of Arkansas in 1975. In 1982, President Reagan appointed him US Attorney for the western district of Arkansas, making him the youngest US Attorney in the country at 31. At least one anecdote from Hutchinson’s time as US Attorney is notable. He mediated an end to a three-day standoff between law enforcement and a white supremacist group, reportedly donning a flak jacket to do so.
Hutchinson lost races for the US Senate and Arkansas attorney general before being finally elected to the US House in 1996. In the interim, he was chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party from 1990 to 1995. While in Congress, he served as one of the House impeachment managers during the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton.
When George W. Bush became president, Hutchinson was appointed administrator of the DEA. A short time later, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, he was moved to the new Department of Homeland Security as head of the Border and Transportation Security Directorate.
Hutchinson returned to Arkansas in 2006 to run for governor. That year he won the primary but lost the general election. He worked as a consultant afterward and returned to win it all in 2014 and served two terms, leaving office in January 2023.
Hutchinson has a reputation as a popular governor with a strong conservative record. For better or for worse, his record as governor at least somewhat reflects a record of Republican talking points over the past decade or so. In 2015, Hutchinson was one of the Republican governors who refused to allow the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states and he resumed executions in Arkansas after a 12-year hiatus. In 2019, he signed a bill that would criminalize abortion when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, but he has since said that he opposes a federal abortion ban. Hutchinson signed a religious freedom law after having the legislature rewrite the bill to more closely mirror the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and vetoed a bill that would have banned gender transformation surgeries for minors, calling it “a vast government overreach.” The legislature overrode his veto. On COVID, Hutchinson banned vaccine requirements but then praised the Biden Administration for its vaccination efforts and its attempts to “depoliticize” the COVID response. In toto, Hutchinson’s record, while conservative, seems moderate for the GOP.
One of the most important areas of deviation from the Republican Party line was in the aftermath of the 2020 elections. Hutchinson initially opposed Trump in 2016 but ultimately endorsed him after the primary. Trump returned the favor and endorsed Hutchinson’s reelection campaign in 2018.
After January 6, however, Hutchinson became a vocal critic of The Former Guy. In 2021, Hutchinson accused Trump of dividing the GOP. He later criticized the Republican push to censure and excommunicate Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for their participation in the January 6 committee. In 2022, he said that Republicans who believed Trump’s stolen election claims were not fit for office.
In one of the strongest statements that I’ve heard from any Republican, Hutchinson told CNN’s Jake Tapper in January 2022, “We have to one, make sure we show that that [Trump’s behavior] was unacceptable. We have to define it in the right way, it was an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power. And thirdly, we have to make sure we are clear that President Trump did have some responsibility for that.”
And last week, Hutchinson was one of the few Republicans to not offer a knee-jerk attack on Trump’s indictment. In a short statement on Twitter, he called the indictment “a dark day for America.” I was tempted to dismiss the statement as another defense of Trump, but then I finished reading it.
In the end, I thought Hutchinson’s words were apt and well-suited to the situation. It really is a “dark day for America when a former president is indicted.” That doesn’t mean the indictment is a travesty or the justice system has been weaponized. It’s a dark day when a former president does something to get indicted for. Hutchinson’s balanced statement set the right tone in calling for the question to be worked out within the legal system and saying that we need to move on from Trump.
If you’re wondering why I’m spending so much time on Trump, it’s because I see Trumpism as the preeminent issue of our time. The choice between Trumpism and traditional candidates, either Republican or Democrat, is literally a choice between a personality cult in which everything is subject to the whims of man at the party’s helm or the constitutional rule of law that we have known for the past 247 years. The most important thing that we can do to preserve our stable democracy is call out and hold Trump accountable for his innumerable bad actions while not electing him or his minions again.
But I’m also a conservative. I favor limited government and, although I try to avoid culture wars as I said last week (in large part because establishing and maintaining culture is not a constitutional role of government), I don’t like the Democratic positions on a variety of cultural and economic issues, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I like the Republican side of the culture wars either. I tend to be toward the small “l,” leave-everybody-alone brand of libertarianism. But Republicans aren’t as in favor of limited government and economic freedom as they were a few years ago either.
I rambled there for a minute to underscore that I’m not fond of either party. As the Republican Party veered not right or left but Trumpward over the past few years, it pushed me toward the Democrats. On the other hand, as Democrats became more extreme, they pushed me in the other direction. I’ve said in the past that Republicans try to make me vote Democrat and Democrats try to make me vote Republican.
I’d like to see good, nontrumpy conservative option for 2024. The problem with the current and likely GOP contenders is that they’re all way too trumpy. For example, even Trump’s strongest opponents in the primary are more concerned about the fact that Trump may have to face a jury than they are about the underlying bad behavior. If Nikki Haley and Mike Pence can’t acknowledge that Trump likely broke the law, then I can’t trust them to head the country or even the party.
Asa Hutchinson might be a unicorn. The Arkansas governor seems to be a conservative in the traditional Republican model. I won’t say that I agree with everything in his record, but he does have a spine, which is something sadly lacking in most Republicans these days. There aren’t too many Republicans like Hutchinson left in the party. And that’s by design.
That’s why he won’t win the nomination. Today’s Republicans don’t want candidates with a spine. They only want Donald Trump and those who will bend the knee to him.
Well, at least I know who to vote for in the Primary.
Thanks.Report
Weren’t Republicans supposed to have had a really deep farm team? Asa Hutchinson ain’t it, my fellow Ordinarians.Report
A deep bench doesn’t mean that every Republican is ready for the presidency.Report
Huh. That’s exactly what I thought it meant.Report
Well, 80% of Republicans are better than the people we’ve chosen in the last four general elections, but the same can be said about 70% of Independents, 60% of Democrats, 10% of pets…Report
No, only that there are sufficient people with experience consistent with successful presidential candidates in the past. Multi-term governors from large growing states? Check. Long-time Senators who aren’t septagenerians? Check. The problem for all of those is that there’s a Republican who’s a former President. And in the end, there can be only one.Report
The problem is he has a cult. What that translates into in terms of votes remains to be seen, but if the sane vote is split again then he’ll be unstoppable.Report
You’re seeing Ron DeSantis as Bill Pullman, the stable, handsome fiance at the beginning of the movie, but the female lead is still in love with her ex.Report
Just waiting for the first person to suggest that because Hutchinson isn’t a knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, proto-fascist crook Team Blue is somehow obliged to vote for him, or at least to refrain from criticizing him if he somehow becomes the candidate of Team Red.Report
I heard that Hutchinson is so moderate, that George Soros is backing him.
Lets all spread that news.Report
I’m sure if he makes any progress in becoming President he’ll transform into a proto-fascist super-racist in Team Blue’s eyes.Report
Well, maybe. If so, it will be because he’d have to make that transformation to make any progress toward the nomination.Report
Are we supposed to think there will be less drama and more truth for the President than we had for critical Supreme Court seats? Blue wants to believe these things so they’ll find (or make up) a reason to believe them.Report
Believing what you want to believe and making up reasons for it is simply color-blind human nature. As the last five or six years makes abundantly clear. You’ve made your prediction, so we’ll wait and see.Report
Yes, and feel free to poke me about it later, but this prediction only works if Trump doesn’t get the nod.Report
oh, you found a racist transphobe who’s slightly less racist and a little bit less transphobic than the rest? BFD.Report
agreedReport
phil, buddy
when the accusation that people level against you is that you’re so inflexibly devoted to ideology that attempting to accommodate your demands is impossible because you’ll never accept the outreach of outsiders as meaningful, and when they say that efforts to engage you seriously are a waste of time because you’re less interested in discussion than you are in sermons, and when you want to show that they’re wrong and that you have genuine ideas and concerns that are more than just primal not-the-mama screams at a tribal opponent
you shouldn’t agree with them when they troll youReport
Density buddy – you should remember that what you think is hilarious trolling can still be true for folks on the other side.Report
I know you think it’s true.
That’s the point.
When you wonder why it is that Republicans always seem to advance frothing-mad racist transphobes as candidates and never anyone reasonable, remember this conversation.Report
The last “reasonable” republican I saw on the campaign trail was Jeb Bush when he ran for governor in Florida the first time. You will not he’s not run since loosing the nod to Trump. If Republicans were serious about appealing to folks like me in a general that’s where they’d go.
Hutchinson has a track record. Anyone can evaluate it. And to get a nod instead of trump he’s got to push even farther into territory that damns him and the GOP.
I get the you don’t like it. I get you think i’m not bright. I get you think this is all fun and games.
Remember this. Gov. Hutchinson, Gov. DeSantis,a nd President Trump advocate for policies that hurt people I love, including my children. I am not backing down from that fight.Report
From what I understand, every single Republican running for president since Richard Nixon in 1960 has been compared to Hitler.
(They probably thought about going after Eisenhower as well but, for a handful of reasons, it never took off.)Report
Nixon was an actual crook. I don’t recall Reagan or Bush 1 being compared to Hitler by anyone worth reading. Bush 2 started to turn that way, but Trump actually tripped across the fascist line.Report
I’m not talking about Nixon in 1974 being compared to Hitler.
Daley compared him to Hitler in 1960.
“Anyone worth reading”
Okay, then. That evolves into “this time it’s different than that time”, I am guessing?Report
So did I miss the OT staff meeting where today was try and prove how stupid we think Philip is? Cause I’m not laughing.
Because it is different – there are actual policies that have translated into actual laws that are leading down a historically familiar if disgusting path. before, people were poking at hints or personalities.Report
If I say “X happened” and your response is “I don’t remember X happening in any important way”, then that tells me that me providing evidence of X happening won’t be particularly meaningful because of the *TWO* different outs you’ve provided yourself.
1. Your Memory
2. The importance of the thing happening.
And so it’s not even disagreeing that X happened.
And that’s exhausing.
But the real point is that if you have enough Type I errors, you’re going to find yourself with Type II errors eventually.Report
Lots of X’s happen. And Are minor and unremarkable. At some point, the numbers of X’s becomes remarkable. We have reached the point where the number of X’s as expressed by actual laws has become remarkable.
Neither of those outcomes is indicative of any error. Especially Statistical analyses, as you allude to.Report
The number of false Xs is remarkable if you’re coming out and saying “X is happening!” without wrestling with all of the other times that “X is happening!” was said and was wrong. Not only wrong, based in obvious posturing.
Oh, X is happening, you tell me? Well, that’s X for you. Happens a lot.
On top of that, there’s the whole situation where we say “New Phenomenon is as bad as X!” when New Phenomenon is merely a cultural hot button from the last week or so.
That’s a good way to normalize X. “If New Phenomenon is as bad as X, then that means that X was only as bad as New Phenomenon. Huh.”
Now, get this, I am someone who is also opposed to X.
That’s actually why I think that normalizing X is *BAD*.Report
You are opposed to fascisistic oppression of the LGBTQ+ community, and the denial of women’s body autonomy, the stripping of the vote from Black Americans, and the casting of Democrats as pedophiles? Do tell.
Because those are the X’s I care about. And they are now becoming law when prior they were hushed whispers that were easily dismissed as the fever dreams of crackpot in basements. Which they were.
As Chip often notes, the mask has been ripped off. So we call it what we see.Report
I don’t think you’re stupid, but the sick thing is, that’s just another thing you think I said that I didn’t.Report
I didn’t reference anyone. Why do you assume its you?
And why are all sorts of other people allowed to feel and say similar things here but not me?Report
You’ve specifically said to me that I must think you’re stupid, or that I act like I think you’re stupid. You said it, that word, “stupid”, in reference to my opinion of you.Report
I saw a comment on Twitter a while back (who knows if it’s reliable, i haven’t checked) describing a study that was done on people with sub-90 IQs — apparently the researchers found that this population didn’t understand the concept of hypothetical questions. Like, when they were asked “how would you have felt yesterday afternoon if you didn’t have breakfast and lunch”, they would answer “what are you talking about, I did have breakfast and lunch”.
It’s a truism that “politics is the mind-killer”, but reading the above got me thinking about this in numeric terms. Like, someone could have an IQ of 105 and have normal intellectual capabilities, but once they start talking about politics, they get a -20 applied to their IQ and suddenly they can’t grasp how hypotheticals and analogies work, and they struggle to engage in deductive reasoning. But they’re used to thinking of themselves as basically smart & capable and don’t realize that they’ve become situationally stupid.Report
If your intent was to be … reassuring … you missed the mark. Frankly it comes of a tad condescending, though not nearly as snarky as others here might be.
I have openly and repeatedly said that I am challenged by the inability to read between the lines (and not just because I’m married). I’ve had actual cognitive testing done relating to this – When I entered grad school my father was convinced I was math dyslexic and had an education psychologist friend run me through what was then the standard testing to determine that. turns out I’m part of the population who thinks in words and paragraphs, not pictures, and since most higher math is letters I couldn’t reason through all the letters in calculus because I couldn’t “see” the relationships the way a successful mathematician does. Which is why nearly all of my answers are off of what is written, not what was meant. Yes that’s my cross to bear and no one else’s. But its not about measured intelligence, or its situational loss.Report
I don’t remember you ever saying that. I interpreted a lot of those moments as attempts to spin. I’ll back off, at least somewhat.Report
The more sophisticated version is something like this:
“The Average American Male is 5’10”.”
“I know a guy who is 6’3″!”Report
KenB: I saw that too, along with the follow-up showing that it was a 4chan greentext of questionable provenance meant as support for the idea that black men were genetically inferior.
So I didn’t put much stock in it then, and certainly not now that I’ve seen it used for support of any number of ridiculous ideas with the argument being “well, if you were SMART, like ME, you could IMAGINE how this MIGHT BE REAL, therefore WE SHOULD DO IT…”Report
That said it’s entirely possible that many people think in terms of tribal red/blue affiliations without recognizing it, because it’s not a mode of engagement with the world that feels wrong, and in most cases it gets you were you need to go so it doesn’t even come out wrong. And this is not a thing that implies the use of racially-coded language to describe, there are plenty of quite intelligent and well-learned people who think this way just because nobody’s ever challenged them about it.Report
Any time you start talking about differences in intelligence, there will be people who direct it in unfortunate ways, but that doesn’t mean the info itself is wrong. The AI doomers use this same sort of thing to convey how utterly unfathomable a superintelligent AGI could be in relation to even the smartest among us.
Anyway, the thing I find most interesting is how different mental experiences and abilities can be from one person to the next, where it’s not just a matter of degree but that some people can have completely different modes of thought.Report
I’ll tell you what I want right now – a Republican candidate who opposes free stuff for blacks. Who supports equality of opportunity, not equality of results. Who doesn’t think that sodomy should be elevated to the same Constitutional status as race and religion. Who knows that low-income women should get their life together and find a husband. That’s all I’m looking for. Would you accept such a candidate?Report
Considering such a candidate would be attempting to inflict a narrow Christian morality on a secular nation in violation of the Constitution?
NO, I wouldn’t.
Good to see you finally taking off the mask though. Now that you are being direct and honest we can waste less time clarifying things, can’t we?Report
But Jeb said all those things in his 1994 campaign.
(I will walk around grinning for the rest of the day.)Report
I worked for his administration after he was elected. He didn’t govern that way.
But whatever.Report
You didn’t say anything about his administration – you said that you liked his first gubernatorial campaign.Report
Fine, enjoy your win.Report
I can’t believe you pulled that off.Report
It grosses me out that I have that 11:50 comment on my permanent record, but I think it was worth it.Report
Considering your open and long standing support for racist, misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic policies and laws – and the politicians who enact them – what about that quote do you believe besmirches you?Report