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OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: On road to GOP nomination
Iowans head for their Monday-evening caucuses in 39 days, and New Hampshire voters go to the polls for their primary in 47 days.
Stories by John Brummett
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Go-along Hill rides again
If Sam Rayburn knew what he was talking about 70 or so years ago, then U.S. Rep. French Hill surely is getting along very well in Congress these days.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: It comes down to editing
An old white gentleman with an affinity for moderation and incrementalism in his politics as expressed in his antiquated practice of newspaper column-writing m…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Jason Rapert’s war
Jason Rapert says an aide to Gov. Sarah Huckabee called and asked if he would be interested in serving on the state Library Board. He says he told the aide he'…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: No longer high on the Hogs
I may have come up with a plan to resurrect Razorback football, which is merely the dominant cultural influence of my time and place--my time being the last ne…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Partisan convenience? Nah!
Republican-nominated federal judges have determined that, gosh darn, they had no choice.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: And the band plays on
Joe Biden is another year older, and Donald Trump is as transparently ridiculous as ever.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Not in reasonable times
Amendment 33 to the state Constitution was ratified by the voters in 1942 for the surely naïve aim of keeping politics out of higher-education and prison matte…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Weighing another Trump presidency
Retired four-star Marine Corps General John Kelly, former chief of staff to Donald Trump as president, spoke to The Washington Post the other day with exaspera…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Performance at the Capitol
If you're the governor and your prison director is seeking to do your bidding but runs into resistance from the Board of Corrections, there are a couple of way…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: A matter of decency
State government seems to have discovered only lately that the buildings of the Arkansas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired and the Arkansas School for…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Democrats find a heartbeat
When the ticket closed Tuesday for candidate filings, the state Democratic Party held a press briefing to announce its pulse.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Bubba only about half-hog on Sam
Bubba McCoy, fielding an unusually early Thanksgiving call from me because I wanted to take his temperature on the football situation, said he thought it was, …
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Asa betting on long shot
Asa Hutchinson told the Sunday episode of "Capitol View" on television station KARK-TV that an Iowa farmer had said to him that he was entirely too normal for …
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: A tale of two women
Republican women vary. We have Sarah Sanders and Nikki Haley. We beheld their vivid contrast Wednesday evening.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Not exactly rational
Surely you feel it. There is something happening here. It is not exactly clear.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Generic wins race over horrible
New polling suggests that Donald Trump might well defeat Joe Biden today in five of the six likely decisive states. But it also suggests that anyone else with …
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: All in for the boos
It has been rough out there on the Republican presidential campaign trail for former Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Heed the sound of arrows
I cannot imagine how I know it, considering my proud insistence that I do not read online comments on these columns. I must have made a mouse slip the other da…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: As the spirit moves
It seems unlikely that House Speaker Mike Johnson could deliver the presidency to a losing Donald Trump in January 2025. He would be stymied even if he thought…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: A confounding poll
The 25th annual Arkansas Poll is out from the University of Arkansas. It shows that Sarah Sanders is less approved-of than recent governors including her dad. …
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Seeking new business plan
Gov. Sarah Sanders explained the other day that the media used a failed business plan in asking her about a lawsuit accusing her of unlawful secrecy in her sto…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Not micromanaging at all
I do not attend many legislative committee meetings anymore.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Only a short-lived dream
Tom Emmer was acceptable as a Republican nominee for speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, at least in the context that we were going to have to have a…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Selling the state down the river?
Closed-door maneuvering at the rich and powerful levels to mess with the Buffalo National River has run into a mighty mite from the past.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Ballyhoo and brouhaha
They opened a state-of-the-art specialty hospital on the rarefied upper east side of Manhattan. Its specialty was gynecology and obstetrics. They called it a w…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Mushy, not muscular
Searching last week for "muscular moderation," my new and futile obsession, I found instead French Hill and other mushiness.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Requiem for Bruce Moore
For as long as he was city manager of Little Rock--a long time, 21 years--Bruce Moore heard with the rest of us that the city manager form of government was pa…
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OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Lessons from further south
People wonder if Sarah Sanders is in political trouble owing to her attacks on freedom of information and growing public curiosities about the price and procur…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: A boon for the well-off
The vaunted LEARNS program is doing little more thus far than sending unneeded lifelines to vibrant and robust parents living in vibrant and robust areas.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Setting standard for cruelty
The Arkansas purges of nearly a half-million Medicaid recipients over the last six months are not as draconian as they sound. Or at least we can certainly hope…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: A tempest in the library
There is a grandstand-preening and arch-conservative former state senator whose name I seek to forget. And he never got it even though I tried diligently to ex…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Blame Biden; no thinking required
"Absolutely. I think this is a great opportunity for our candidates."--Ronna McDaniel, national Republican chairwoman, when asked Saturday on Fox News to elabo…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: In service of reason
Warning: This commentary comes from one who has come to abhor the two major American political parties--the Republicans more, of course, but the Democrats aple…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: A fraction of the truth
Gov. Sarah Sanders was talking at last about the lectern. A phrase kept coming to mind. It was "modified limited hangout."
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: For muscular moderation
It cannot happen. It would require today's politicians to vote with and for some in the opposing party in the interest of country over party.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: It really is about the lectern
So, I will tell you a story.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Let the investigation begin
State Sen. Jimmy Hickey of Texarkana was hesitant in the recent special session to vote even for Gov. Sarah Sanders' final watered-down bill on weakening the F…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: A little subversion in Little Rock
It sounds almost subversive in the context of the raging race-retro contemporary Arkansas political culture.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: On civility and the media
It's been a convulsive few days in Arkansas in matters of media and civility, or incivility. Let's run through it.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Asa still fighting despite odds
Asa Hutchinson hasn't lost the sense of humor I never really knew he had.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: An instructive poll
The Washington Post came out Sunday with a headline essentially saying it didn't believe its own poll that was conducted in partnership with ABC.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Sarah risks rural distrust
Arkansas politics has always been about rural working-class distrust and resistance of government that seemed tone-deaf and full of itself.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Take the extra second mile
It's partly about whether you instinctively want to throw people off Medicaid because you think they ought to get up and go to work. I get that.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Going the way of the dodo
The moderate movement in America, an oxymoronic if not laughable phrase, reached its height in a single photograph taken in the early afternoon of June 24, 202…
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Best cut-and-paste ever
Maybe you'd simply call it "An Amendment to the State Constitution to Guarantee Freedom of Information."
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Tucker and the scarlet ‘Y’
What a week it was. First Arkansas Republicans turned against their vaunted leader, Gov. Sarah Sanders. Then some of the several still-existent Democrats took …
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Commoners prevail, sort of
It's huge for royalty to get rebuffed by a legislative body of commoners. And make no mistake. Queen Sarah lost.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: No way to treat the queen
The queen got the non-royal treatment.
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Subscriber ExclusiveOPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: The queen demands
An editorial in this newspaper Sunday considered disapprovingly Gov. Sarah Sanders' announcement of her intended evisceration of the state's Freedom of Informa…
