This piece, like Asa Hutchinson’s bid for the GOP presidential nomination, will be brief, simply because there isn’t much to say on the matter that isn’t intuitive.
The former Arkansas governor’s presidential campaign is dead in the water. Much like Rep. Eric Swalwell’s bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2020, Hutchinson’s campaign is a calculated, egotistical exercise in which he hopes to further his name recognition and commercial viability. After all, there is a lot of money in being a good (read as “useless”) Republican. Dare we forget his onanistic lifestyle of holding elected office while refusing to exercise the mandate of political power to protect his constituents?
Having repeatedly invoked the mantle of “limited government” to defend his inaction on the chemical castration and genital mutilation of children, Hutchinson is woefully out of step with the voters his campaign would have to win over. He’s gone so far as to publically lament the “intolerant ways” in which Republican voters and grassroots conservatives resist having transgenderism pushed upon the nation’s youth. He’s even allowed Covid hysteria to inform his decision-making and advocated for re-masking schoolchildren as late as July 2021.
Hutchinson, like every other political entity vowing to stop Donald Trump, will undoubtedly be able to raise millions of dollars from people who dislike the 45th president and prefer a time in which elitist bipartisanship furthered the neoliberal strip-mining of American culture by gutting our republic of its civic norms and reducing the U.S. economy to little more than the tinkering of numbers on a spreadsheet.
With these millions of dollars, Hutchinson will be able to enrich himself and his allies through political nonprofits and PACs. He will likely get a book deal for the courageous act of being a Republican who repeats Washington Post headlines. And, should his campaign even last this long, he will probably drop out before the first 2024 primary contest.
Why? Because he doesn’t want to be the president. He wants to be rich, and he wants to be a celebrity.
Hutchinson wants to be a millionaire, to go on late television, and to have his opinion valued by over-credentialed mid-wits.
There is not a single solitary reason to take him seriously.
Samuel Mangold-Lenett is a staff editor at The Federalist. His writing has been featured in the Daily Wire, Townhall, The American Spectator, and other outlets. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @Mangold_Lenett.
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