JOHN BRUMMETT: Principles? Pshaw!

In February there was reason to believe Gov. Asa Hutchinson shared some measure of a moderate political essence with the admirably principled John Kasich.

It was Hutchinson himself who told me the story.

As a newcomer at a governors' conference, he introduced himself to his colleagues by saying he was inheriting a Medicaid expansion program on which a quarter-million people in his state depended, but which legislators of his party opposed.

On the ensuing Sunday, Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio who had attended that conference and heard the Arkansas governor's remarks, telephoned Hutchinson. Kasich, who had expanded Medicaid in his state, said he was coming out of church and thinking of Hutchinson and Arkansas.

He urged Asa not to let those quarter-million people lose their health insurance.

A few nights later at a town-hall meeting in Conway, I heard Hutchinson complain of the unfairness that, without expanded Medicaid, a tip-dependent waitress pouring coffee for a low-income worker would get no help on health insurance while the low-income worker would get an Obamacare health-exchange subsidy to pay for most of his.

Hutchinson wasn't merely arguing for continued Medicaid expansion in order to save his budget. He was arguing a point of human fairness.

It sounded like the spirit of Kasich to me.


On Tuesday, though, in Kasich's Ohio, there emerged a basic and stark difference between these Republican governors.

Kasich stayed true to what he'd said before. Asa either sold his soul on, or rationalized away, what he'd said.

Kasich did not attend the Donald Trump-nominating Republican National Convention in Cleveland. He explained his reasoning to Chris Matthews of MSNBC, saying, "In politics a lot of people think your rhetoric is nothing more than that. But the things I said matter deeply to me."

Staying away, he said, was the "right thing to do" considering that he had meant what he had said--that he could not accept the tone and substance of Trump's presidential campaign on such issues as building a border wall and deporting 11 million immigrants and downplaying savings reforms in entitlements.

In February Hutchinson was saying about Trump some of the same things Kasich was saying, though he was not endorsing Kasich but the more conservatively acceptable Marco Rubio in the Republican presidential primary.

Hutchinson told the Arkansas media in February: "It is up to Arkansas to stop the Donald Trump show. The next generation of conservatives cannot allow Donald Trump to take everything we stand for and throw it away."

About that time, he gave an interview to National Public Radio and said: "I do not see his [Trump's] discussion of issues as serious. The words are frightening."

That was strong verbiage, though not strong enough to survive to Tuesday night.

Hutchinson stood before the Republican National Convention and said almost precisely what I'd predicted he would say, which was little to nothing about Trump, and that Hillary Clinton is frightful.

He did say that Trump was "the kind of leader" we need, which I took to be a clever Clinton-style finesse. He was trying to be positive about Trump, but was limiting himself to praising a type, not a person.

But then, at the five-minute mark as he concluded his convention moment, Hutchinson went where I didn't think he would go, meaning under the covers with The Donald.

He ended his presentation by saying: "Donald Trump is the right leader for our time."

He apparently was saying our time was ripe for a frightening throwing away of his own values.

In the end, Our Man Asa showed himself to be no John Kasich at all, but a Rick Perry--a governor who talked boldly against Trump until Trump won and then took a cozy sleeper car on the Trump Train.

There's nothing particularly unusual about an undistinguished politician contradicting himself according to circumstance. There aren't many John Kasichs, sadly.

I'm merely a little disappointed in myself for the misread.

Maybe the difference is as simple as that Kasich carried his state of Ohio in the presidential primary and could afford to snub Trump, but Trump carried Asa's Arkansas and forced Hutchinson to fashion an accommodation.

Indeed, the Arkansas Republican establishment that alternately ridiculed and abhorred Trump in February is now crawling under the covers with Donald and Asa.

Trump's man in Arkansas is Bud Cummins, who got summarily ousted as U.S. attorney because the Karl Rove-connected Tim Griffin wanted the job.

On Tuesday Cummins went along with giving a spotlight to Griffin, a Mike Huckabee and Rubio supporter and now the lieutenant governor, to announce the Arkansas delegation's Trump-favoring vote in the roll call of states.

Griffin boasted of all the great things about Arkansas--catfish and rice and a plurality vote in its primary "for the next president of the United States, Donald J. Trump."

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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 07/21/2016

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