Well, as Steve informed us, Chris Sununu benched himself with this:
To win, Republicans need our message to appeal to new voters, and we can do this without sacrificing classic conservative principles of individual liberty, low taxes and local control. But we must abandon the issues that are solely made for social media headlines, such as banning books or issuing curriculum fiats to local school districts hundreds of miles away from state capitals. Republicans should re-embrace local control and let parents within their own communities decide what’s right.
And Steve rejoined with a most excellent translation:
Governor Groomer is doubling down on porn in schools, systemic racism against white kids, and using the Left’s narratives. Good boy, Chris. Hey, can you be a character witness in Democrat Chairman Buckley’s defamation trial?
Which can be summarized as:
Chris Sununu is officially now a NeverTrumper
Which the only results those morons accomplished in 2020 was to help elect Biden. So once again, Sununu’s late to the party. And now has proclaimed that he’s fully against between a third and a half of the Republican base. Yeah, that would have been a winning hand given that he his best band of national polling results was betwee 0.5%- 1%. And in today’s RealClearPolitics aggregate polling, he’s still only at 1% – far less than the 5% he so thought he’d rise to handily to get to the debate stage.
Even with his ferocious frenzy of appearances on the illiberal talking head spots (really, “The View”? Remember, the Left isn’t going to vote in the Republican primaries). And I would have to wonder that in my snap unscientific poll (plaudits to Steve for his technical “clean up”) how he would have faired against Chuck Morse (5.24%), Kelly Ayotte (64.92%), or Frank Edelblut (29.84%)?
So now the only question is “what’s the over/under that he’d run for a fifth term (co-asked with “will that kill the Republican legislative majorities”?)? Or is it a talking head or consulting gig?
Anyways, this series has run its course and I’m glad it’s done. But gladder that we’d have Republican in the Oval Office aligned with Democrats socially – and shoving their Culture War spawned Overton Window so far to the Left that it’s outside Pluto’s orbit.
UPDATE: forgot that I had a “Notable Quote” to go along with this aborted effort (perfect word choice for a pro-abortion Republican); emphasis mine:
It should be a rule that if you want to announce whether you’re running for president, no less than five people have to know who you are and what you do for a living. Reporters in Washington don’t count.
Hey, that “five” fits right in Sununu’s “five” but five people is a whole lot less than “poll percentage”; brutal. And the beginning of the next sentence is even more brutal:
A man named Chris Sununu declared in a Washington Post op-ed this week that he will, in fact, not be seeking the Republican presidential nomination, and I honestly doubt that even three people reading this could identify Sununu in a lineup of pudgy white men. I’d heard of him before but had no idea what he looked like and wasn’t even sure if he was still an elected official. As it turns out, he’s the sitting governor of New Hampshire.
But more importantly, if you’re going to announce a campaign or explain why you’re not running, the reasons for it shouldn’t be maddeningly stupid. That Sununu chose the Post to lay out his thought process was already a clue that this wasn’t something Republican voters needed to be concerned with. But his explanation was equal parts delusional and pathetic in declaring how noble he believes he is by not running because he will instead be more effective on the sidelines lecturing the base about what should and shouldn’t be important to them.
Because as we all know, the Washington Post (aka, “WaPo”) is SUCH a bastion of conservatism and Republicanism (/sarc). And for him to yammer about “individual liberty” after what he did during COVID to ELIMINATE individual liberties is shameful and nothing less than whitewashing himself. Ask anyone who IS (rather than just calling themselves such) Conservative knows better what cape Sununu is trying on at the “campaign store”.
“To win, Republicans need our message to appeal to new voters, and we can do this without sacrificing classic conservative principles of individual liberty, low taxes and local control,” wrote Sununu. “But we must abandon the issues that are solely made for social media headlines, such as banning books or issuing curriculum fiats to local school districts hundreds of miles away from state capitals.”
Do I REALLY need to remind you that it was Sununu that unlocked that Culture War door (SB263) that let the Left stroll through the door and gaslight us all that pornography is a necessary component for “learning” academic subjects (snort!).
Yes, Sununu is one of those Republicans who still believes winning national elections can be done with slogans about tax cuts and “free markets.” In other words, he is the kind of Republican who believes he’s elected to do nothing.