Dem
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GOP
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The writing was on the wall in 10-foot letters. And yesterday, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson proved he can read, as he dropped out of the presidential race.
Lane-splitting seems to work well for motorcyclists, but it's not a great strategy in politics. Both Hutchinson and Chris Christie jumped into the race with the promise that they would be anti-Trumpers, and would be the candidates for those Republicans who want to see the party emerge from the wilderness, and return to some semblance of normalcy. The fundamental problem for both men is that "traditional Republican" might get it done in a general election, but it's not a great path in the MAGA-dominated GOP primaries. And so, while both Hutchinson and Christie were willing to hit Donald Trump a little (for example, saying they wouldn't vote for him if he was the Republican nominee), they weren't willing to go for any body blows. That left both candidates in a no-man's land: Too Trumpy for the Never Trumpers and too Never Trumpy for the MAGA crowd.
In Hutchinson's case, one wonders what fantastical tales he was telling himself in the last 6-8 weeks before hitting the campaign trail every day. He was barely registering in polls, to the point that many pollsters stopped asking about him by name. He stopped making debate cuts long ago. He was out of money. His campaign manager quit because he believed Hutchinson had no path forward. Exactly what was the former governor hoping for? A Palm Beach-style fiasco in Iowa, wherein 12,000 Trump votes were accidentally registered as Hutchinson votes? Sorry, Asa, they don't use butterfly ballots for caucuses.
With Hutchinson out, the GOP race has just two delusional candidates left in Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. Or three, if you want to include megapastor Ryan Binkley, whose prayers and "personal relationship with Jesus" earned him exactly 774 more votes in Iowa than we got. These folks will all reach the end of the line in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, the only Democratic primary with any intrigue at all is New Hampshire, because of the write-in storyline. Add it up, and it could be the most anticlimactic primary season in recent memory. Oh well, we'll just have to write even more about Trump's legal troubles. (Z)