A ‘lane’ for Asa?

   Steve Barnes

There’s this fellow named Tim Stanley, who started life as a liberal but has become steadily more conservative. Some dozen years ago and then some, while completing his doctorate in political science, he campaigned for a student government office. Asked to submit in writing his platform, Stanley needed but a single sheet: “This is hand written because I was too drunk to write a manifesto. There is no better testament to my character.”

How not to like him? Today he’s a columnist for a British newspaper and a television pundit for networks on both sides of the Atlantic, focusing frequently on American affairs. The Fox network debate of Republican presidential hopefuls — a meeting boycotted by Donald Trump, who had other plans — was too much for Stanley to resist.

“The candidates were battling either to be the anti-Trump or the Trump proxy; both involve becoming Trump, which starts with calling names,” Stanley observed afterward, careful to note that none of the seven men and one woman on stage were as bloodthirsty in addressing their rivals as is the former president’s habit. Almost genteel by comparison, true. As was Stanley, in his assay of the candidates’ performance for Britain’s Telegraph.

Mike Pence: “Folksy and robotic… if you put a coin in him, he’d recite the Gettysburg Address.”

Ramaswamy: “Clearly irritating, the way accomplished young men often are … publishing a video of himself playing tennis with his shirt off.”

Chris Christie: “How’s he supposed to top that? Sumo wrestling?”

Ron DeSantis: “Confuses shouting for having personality.”

And: “Senator Tim Scott reminded us he had a single mother … and Nicki Haley that she was a woman.”

The incumbent governor of North Dakota and the immediate past governor of Arkansas escaped Stanley’s barbs. That is not necessarily a good thing, no matter that, with presumably rare exceptions, Stanley’s readers can’t vote in the U.S.; Asa Hutchinson might prefer they were so enfranchised.

A pro-life, tax-cutting, payroll- slicing, drug-busting, crime-fighting conservative: That was the Asa Hutchinson, self-described, who made it to the Milwaukee platform with barely a day and a dollar to spare, but also the Asa Hutchinson whose smile he hopes will evoke the image of Ronald Reagan. A problem: Reagan’s presidency ended 35 years ago, well before much of today’s electorate reached voting age, and there is the suspicion that much of the GOP “base” has even a notion of how Reagan approached his duties, how he performed in office. As Staney asserted, “the Republicans are totally [Trump’s] party now.”

Nothing in the Wisconsin event contradicted that assessment, widely shared on these shores. The audible disdain for Hutchinson — and Christie — began as they were introduced. Both men expected as much, or should have, outspoken as they have been in their criticism of Trump, and their stated preference that he leave the race rather than risk disaster for down-ballot Republicans in 2024. The boos intensified when the two men made clear, not for the first time, that they would not endorse Trump should he be adjudged a felon.

“I’m not going to support somebody who’s been convicted of a serious felony or who is disqualified under our Constitution,” Hutchinson declared, “and that’s consistent with RNC rules and I hope everybody would agree with me.”

Everybody did not agree. Few in the auditorium did, and surveys of likely Republican primary voters suggest the great majority of them are quite prepared to return Trump to the White House. Mindful of that, six of the eight GOP candidates on stage threw to the winds whatever political or ethical objections they might have to Trump — most of them had welcomed his embrace or sought his favor in earlier years, knowing then what he was — and, with a show of hands, proclaimed themselves prepared to put party over country. (Noted: Hutchinson spoke for Trump at the 2016 Republican nominating convention, and Christie previously was an active supporter and avid defender of Trump, whose presidency made their jobs as governors measurably more difficult.)

Trump’s chat with a predictably fawning Tucker Carlson, streamed opposite the debate, gave columnist Stanley another comic opening, and he took it: “As well as being brutal, Trump is also very funny. The interview could be repackaged as a Netflix comedy special. If only Joan Rivers had run against Trump rather than Hillary Clinton. The ratings would have eclipsed the moon landing.”

No, it is not Ronald Reagan’s Republican “big tent,” not any longer. Still, Hutchinson told me after the debate, he sees a “lane” in this campaign cycle for the sort of traditional, Main Street Republican that his party has put forth for the presidency in decades past. Perhaps he knows something we don’t, Asa Hutchinson, or maybe he simply needs glasses.