Asa Hutchinson’s presidential campaign ended two years ago
Zachary Faria
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Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson will not be a part of the GOP debate on Wednesday. While Hutchinson insists that is not the end of his presidential campaign, the reality is his campaign died well before it began.
Hutchinson, regardless of his merits and long record as a conservative in Bill Clinton’s Arkansas, was never going to win the GOP nomination. He is the second-oldest candidate in the primary, and his brand of conservatism is older than the moment. Hutchinson and his milquetoast, corporate-sensitive conservatism would have been at home in the 2012 field, but the rapid left-wing lurch of the Democratic Party and its weaponization of corporate power, along with the massive political shifts brought on by the pandemic, prove the moment has passed Hutchinson by.
That was proved on April 5, 2021, the day Hutchinson’s not-yet-imagined presidential campaign died. On that day, Hutchinson vetoed a bill that would protect children from being permanently disfigured by puberty blockers, hormone replacements, and surgery. Transgender activists, the Democratic Party, and medical “experts” who profit from these procedures have all fully embraced permanent, irreversible sex changes for children, regardless of the fact that children cannot possibly consent to them with mature judgment and an untold number grow to regret the entire ordeal.
Hutchinson’s brand of go-along-to-get-along conservatism failed to meet the moment. Protecting children from permanent disfigurement based on junk social science was just “legislative interference” in “complex and sensitive matters” between young people and their doctors, according to Hutchinson. Unwittingly, he adopted the language of pro-abortion activists when it came to sex changes for children. “Let’s let parents and doctors make decisions,” as Hutchinson put it, isn’t much different from the pro-abortion canard of “it’s a decision between a woman and her doctor,” given that both involve permanent, irreversible damage to children.
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At that moment, any faint hope Hutchinson had of becoming the GOP nominee ended. A full-scale retreat from the “culture wars” is an untenable position for Republicans when Democrats are pushing permanent sex changes on children as young as 4 years old, pushing pornographic books in schools, and trying to hide children’s mental health problems from the parents Hutchinson says should be making the decisions.
Simply put, you can’t ignore a culture war that is brought to your shore, especially when it involves permanent damage to children. Hutchinson has recognized that on abortion but failed to see it on this matter. As a result, his presidential campaign never had a chance. He should do everyone a favor and stop pretending he has any hope of turning it around when he never had any hope of winning in the first place.