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PORTLAND, MAINE – Term-limited Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson says he wants a role in helping to shape the future of the GOP.
And Hutchinson, who’s finishing up his eighth and final year steering Arkansas, says “that might lead to a presidential campaign down the road.”
Hutchinson made his comments in an interview with Fox News in Portland, Maine, as the National Governors Association’s annual summer meeting got underway. Hutchinson is the current chair of the bipartisan organization.
But hours earlier on Wednesday, Hutchinson made a brief stop in New Hampshire to speak at event at Sig Sauer, the Granite State based firearms and weapons company that also has an ammunition plant in Arkansas.
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It was Hutchinson’s second stop in the state that for a century’s held the first presidential primary – after an April trip to headline the “Politics and Eggs” speaking series at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, a must-stop for White House hopefuls.
The Arkansas governor said he’ll also be traveling to Iowa – whose caucuses for half a century have kicked off the presidential nominating calendar – and to South Carolina – which votes third in the GOP schedule – “to test the message.”
And Hutchinson says his “commonsense conservativism” message includes “taking government off the backs of businesses and letting them do what they do best, which is create jobs,” and “increasing our energy production.”
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The governor, a former federal attorney turned two-term congressman who served as Drug Enforcement Administration administrator and Department of Homeland Security undersecretary during then-President George W. Bush’s administration, emphasized that “my kind of conservatism is the same conservatism that Ronald Reagan led our country with, which is strength, which is freedom, which is less government, which is pro-life, which is pro-Second Amendment. Those are values that I have consistently led with.”
Asked if his type of conservatism still has a home in a Republican Party reshaped into a more populist party by former President Donald Trump, Hutchinson answered that “sometimes we get sidetracked with leadership that takes us astray. But we have to get back to the fundamental principles of our party, and that’s what people want, and they don’t need to have chaos, they need to have problem-solving leadership based upon those principles. I think it’s clear that that’s what America needs and America wants.”
And he said his mission is “to make our case to the base and show that we’re going to be the fighter that they expect and that they saw in Donald Trump, that fighting against whether it’s the establishment or it’s progressive liberal policies that take our country down. We want to fight those battles, but let’s do it in a way that’s consistent with our historic principles.”
Hutchinson acknowledged that “there’s a lot of good Republicans” who are also mulling a national campaign “and we’ll see what they do.”
But he added that “I want to be able to offer something that is unique, that people can rally around. And if that is effective, then I’ll be there. But we want to test those waters. We want to measure the response and make a decision that we think we can contribute to the future of America. So my timeframe will have to be early next year.”
But Hutchinson stressed first things first – “we want to make sure we get through this year well with the election and with my leadership as governor…I want to finish strong as governor. We’ve got more to do and we’re gonna get that done.”
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And looking to his tenure steering the NGA, Hutchinson highlighted his computer science initiative.
“To have majority of governors signed on to a compact saying that we’re going to make computer science a priority in K through 12 education, they’re going to put money behind that. This is extraordinary, both because it’s bipartisan, but because it’s going to make a difference for our young people for decades to come. It’s going to give them opportunities they never had before,” he touted.
