Asa’s Iowa angst

Steve Barnes

It’s not easy being Asa Hutchinson. Lest you believe that his troubles began when he entered the competition for the Republican presidential nomination, consider the roughing up he took from the General Assembly in his last months as Arkansas’ governor. Or, earlier, the agonies inflicted by the previous Republican president: chaos in the COVID-19 supply chain, for one; and serial insults to, and tariffs imposed on, the state’s most important foreign trading partners. Having made a speech at the GOP national convention in 2016 on behalf of his party’s candidate, who went on to win the White House, Hutchinson soon enough (and predictably) became one of his targets, denounced as a RINO and effectively snubbed by his successor as governor, who had been the offended president’s press secretary.

From the start, Hutchinson has calculated that a moderate candidate could consolidate those portions of the Republican Party that either despise Donald Trump or are simply weary of him and fearful of the damage he could inflict on down-ballot candidates in 2024. With such a toehold, he has reasoned, a candidate with a less incendiary approach could go the distance, not only denying Joe Biden re-election but expanding the GOP’s single-digit House margin and recapturing the Senate, in Democratic hands only by the presence of Mr. Biden’s vice president.

The math of Hutchinson’s strategy thus far has seen very little subtraction, as there was very little from which to subtract. The problem is the absence of addition. The Arkansan has failed to move the needle in any poll of Republican sentiment, and his campaign finance report, filed only days ago, shows him trailing most every other candidate of either party, badly. As of June 30, Hutchinson had only about a half-million bucks on hand; Trump had $22.5 million.

The same polls that appear to reduce Hutchinson’s chance of success to a whisper emphasize Trump’s stranglehold over the party’s base, with the former president outpacing second place Ron De-Santis of Florida, the fast-fading Trump wannabe, by a startling 40 percentage points. Among likely Republican voters expressing a preference, Trump and DeSantis consume almost 70 percent. Not another candidate is in double digits. So much for the moderate approach.

In about a month the Republican candidates are to debate for the first time but only those who meet fundraising and polling criteria can participate, and at this writing Hutchinson’s numbers are woefully short. As are his rivals, Hutchinson is concentrating on the Buckeye State, which next January will choose the first delegates to the GOP nominating convention. Iowa has yet to be very kind to him, and the conservative commentariat has been more corrosive than comforting. When Hutchinson agreed to be interviewed by former Fox host Tucker Carlson, the latter zeroed in on the former’s veto of legislation involving transgender medical treatment. Ben Domenech, writing in The Spectator, Britain’s storied conservative journal, described Hutchinson as “burned to a crisp at the stake …Carlson reducing the amiable southern governor into a flailing pile of ash.”

An evening or so later, Fox’s Laura Ingraham and a wingman lampooned Hutchinson for the sparse turnouts at his Iowa events. They’d acquired footage of a meetand- greet session that attracted only a half-dozen Iowans. “Oh God!” Ingraham guffawed. “This looks like a — God bless them — an AA meeting or something. It’s like, ‘I’m John and I’m a Hutchinson supporter. Help me.’ ” Never mind that, in saner circles, those doing the ridiculing are themselves regarded as ridiculous figures. The more sobering take on Hutchinson’s fortunes was provided last week by an organ less often read than reviled by the hard right, but one rather more influential than Fox and its ideological siblings among the moderates and independents that the eventual Republican candidate will need.

Crediting, after a fashion, the candidate for avoiding “easy answers” to complex questions, and for embracing his federal government service in criminal justice and national security positions rather than downplaying it, the New York Times assessment emphasized Hutchinson’s struggles against the currents of contemporary GOP politics. Does a party still enthralled by Trump and Trumpism want the kinder, gentler attitude of Bush I and II? Does it want the upbeat conservatism of Ronald Reagan? Can it abide Hutchinson’s criticisms of Trump? And how much do the Arkansan’s Christian credentials count when his opponents eagerly play the cultural cards that Hutchinson cautions may produce a nomination but sink a November campaign? The evidence thus far, the Times team reports, is not encouraging.

Being Asa Hutchinson is hard, yes. And likely to get harder.