I was fortunate to run into former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson multiple times during my recent trip to the Iowa caucuses. I give him a lot of credit for being incredibly congenial (and chatting with several of my student) and for seeing through a presidential nomination contest that was clearly not going his way.
At any rate, I recently reached out to him to ask him about his experiences as a 2024 presidential candidate. We talked about a number of different things, including changes in the Republican Party over the past decade, how much those changes are just about Donald Trump, how changes in the party today mirror what was going during Ronald Reagan’s takeover between 1976 and 1980, and things Hutchinson and other candidates might have done differently over the past year. I hope you’ll find this interesting. I did.
"It's the party I helped build"