The New Hampshire GOP Shows, Yet Again, That It Is The Stupid Party

This:

Let’s be real. The Democrats’ primary objective is NOT regulating inaugural committees. It is embarrassing Sununu. The Democrats had zero interest in “inaugural slush funds,” “self-dealing” blah, blah, blah when Maggie or Lynchie or Jeannie were doing the slushing:

Since Hassan did not have to file reports disclosing her inaugural activity, there are no public records detailing exactly how the former governor spent her leftover money.

Jacobs said the Governor Maggie Hassan Inaugural Committee supported things such as the “State Employees Holiday Tea, the annual Bridges House Christmas Tree Lighting, Easter Egg Hunt, and refreshments for meetings with legislative leadership.”

And to be clear, I think Sununu’s use of the funds donated to his inaugural committee is gross and the major stupid for giving the Democrats an issue:

The New Hampshire Union Leader reported in December that the Sununu Inaugural Committee, chaired by Sununu’s sister Catherine Sununu, had paid more than $165,000 to the governor, members of his family and close advisers, including $50,000 to Catherine Sununu.

The committee issued checks worth nearly $40,000 to the governor himself, including several for more than $5,000 for the purpose of “travel.”

But once Sununu gave the Democrats an issue, the GOP was even more politically maladroit than usual in dealing with it.

The bill was sponsored by Democrats and was passed out of Senate Election Law Committee on a party-line 3-2 vote. But subsequently Sununu apparently worked with Republican Sen. Regina Birdsell of Hampstead to craft some minor amendments and muster GOP support for the bill.

In other words, Sununu did what Sununu always does – he tried to co-opt the issue.

The problem is that it was too late to co-opt the issue. The way to have co-opted the issue would have been for the GOP to beat the Democrats to the punch and file its own bill.

Of course, the primary stupid in all of this was Sununu for giving the Democrats an issue.