The open line, plus: Asa comes out strong for Republicans to forget about Donald Trump

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Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson says GOP should move on from Trump – Washington Times https://t.co/39jkgcZWi8

– Shealyn Sowers (@ARGOVcomms) January 29, 2022

Asa Hutchinson used a Washington DC platform today to make the case that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election and that it is time for the Republican Party to move beyond Donald Trump.

Note that his press aide, Shealynn Sowers, used her megaphone to get the word out.

This was undoubtedly a planned event. He’s chair of the National Governors Association and had a press availability to open the winter meeting of the group.

No more Trump? Trump lost the election?

He’s indicated this before, with a bit less directness than today.

GOP’s Hutchinson Says He Didn’t Believe 2020 Elections Was `Stolen ‘ – Bloomberg https://t.co/bfKbTsWA6q

– Shealyn Sowers (@ARGOVcomms) January 29, 2022

Good timing for the Arkansas Times and Ernest Dumas’ article for this month’s issue on presidential malfeasance and Arkansas political reactions to the same. He wrote:

In 2020, vote counts for Joe Biden ensured the Electoral College couldn’t again tip the presidential victory to the less popular candidate, and we all saw what happened next. Since then, except for the occasional Democrat or maverick Republican, Arkansas officeholders stood steadfast – silently if not vocally – to brush under the rug everything that Trump and the violent mob he incited on Jan. 6 tried to do to end the democratic tradition of the peaceful transfer of power.

We will have to focus mostly on a single man, Governor Hutchinson, who, stubbornly on occasion, weakly at other times and virtually alone in his party, has found himself sometimes having to disavow the course of his beloved ex-president and the cult that rapturously follows Trump’s every inclination (except getting a COVID-19 vaccine shot). The governor never criticizes Trump, but he did sort of acknowledge that the old adulterer and fake business wizard really had lost the election and fairly.

Dumas noted that Hutchinson has in the past covered himself by saying Trump did good things (specifics lacking). And he noted that Hutchinson supported impeachment of a president – Bill Clinton – accused of far less than Trump has done. Dumas concluded:

I have waited vainly for the governor, in his near-weekly chats with CNN, to be asked how he ranks Clinton’s illicit dalliance and coyness as so much worse than Donald Trump’s crimes against the country.

That said, I must rank Hutchinson, who alone among the talked-about GOP candidates for president has a considerable record of adhering to the law, as our best hope, at least among Republicans, in 2024.

Hutchinson stepped out there today. Is there a market for that in today’s Republican Party? Not much evidence of this in Arkansas, but we are always on the trailing edge of trends. Some recent polling showed Asa may be a man for the times. A poll out this week:

In a hypothetical presidential election between either Former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, against President Joe Biden, a recent poll found that the sitting president would beat both Republicans.

Hutchinson did more or less embroider on the stolen election theme, however, in citing Republican efforts to make it harder for people to vote. (He calls this election integrity and talks about expanded access that is simply untrue in Arkansas.)

“First of all, I don’t believe the election was stolen, and I respect the results,” said Hutchinson, a Republican who won a second term as governor in 2018. “They were challenged as need be and the result is the fact that President Biden is in office. ”

Hutchinson said that states have recently both expanded voting access as well as created new restrictions about “making sure that the votes have integrity,” which he said is “their prerogative.”

“To me, it’s all about the future,” he said. “Anybody who wants to talk about the last election is going to lose the next election.”

Let other voices be heard. Please. But if it’s Tom Cotton or Ron DeSantis, maybe not.

The line is open.

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