Hasn’t Governor Sununu done enough damage already? Before you say it, that win in 2010 (while he was ‘running’ the NHGOP) only happened because of an entire movement in his party that he embraced when he thought they would give him what he wanted, but has since despised and scorned as they have refused to lay down for his brand of capitulation.
Which brings me to this, circa last year, from Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator (H/T to Travelling Mike Rogers for the link) – A classic tale of the failures that follow Governor John Sununu’s establishment (r)epublican ‘Leadership.’ It’s a long read, but has some essential history for every activist in New Hampshire; Party Regulars and check writers could benefit as well. Here is an excerpt.
When Bush 41 ran as the heir to Reagan in 1988 he carried New Hampshire with 62.49% of the vote. In fact, that was down over 6 points from Reagan’s 68.66% New Hampshire win in 1984, but still a solid win. But after four years of the GOP Establishment Restoration in the Bush White House? Managed by Mr. Sununu himself ? Bush 41 received a mere 37.69% of the New Hampshire vote.
Never again from that day in 1992 to this would a GOP presidential nominee ever reach 50% of the vote in New Hampshire again. One after another the Establishment GOP put forth their candidates, insisting on their Establishment credibility as winners. The results? Dole in 1996? 39.37%. Bush 43 in 2000 and 2004? 48.07% and 48.87%. McCain in 2008? 44.52%. And Romney? He who was not only the governor of neighboring Massachusetts but had a vacation home in New Hampshire? And had John Sununu out there energetically speaking for him? Romney received a mere 46.40% of the vote.
Which is to say, absent the conservative message that Reagan so viscerally understood, Republican presidential nominees have performed dismally in New Hampshire — John Sununu’s own back yard.
Why?
What this whole imbroglio with the Tea Party/Cruz/Lee fight against the GOP Establishment comes down to is an understanding — and instinctive understanding — by millions of Americans of what Ronald Reagan was communicating to them. That, in Reagan’s words as he formulated them in 1964, the Left was about “…controlling people. And…when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.”
Now Americans are finding out that every last bit of their private information is to be vacuumed up by the federal government in the name of Obamacare. All of it. From their Social Security information to their bank accounts to their sex lives. They are losing their doctors, their premiums are skyrocketing — while being told to trust the same bureaucracy that runs the IRS, the NSA, and more.
The perception is that just as Republicans like John Sununu aided and abetted the Left’s agenda with tax increases and a Supreme Court appointment back there in the first Bush Administration, so now are there Establishment Republicans all-too asleep-at-the switch and ready to timidly do the same thing.
Worse?
Many see people like John Sununu and John McCain and Lindsey Graham and others as deliberately — say again deliberately — misleading Americans about their willingness to fight the encroaching Leftist agenda that is slowly but surely closing its fingers around every single aspect of American life even as it bankrupts the nation.
They are tired of excuses.
There is a lot more there to read so check it out.
Jeffrey Lord – American Spectator: John Sununu and the Hijacking of America
