Chris Sununu baits the bear

Chris Sununu is not just testing the presidential waters. The New Hampshire governor is baiting the bear. That is, he’s taunting the grumpy grizzly that is Donald Trump — and doing so in a way that shows that Sununu is not just another plodding and predictable politician, but an insouciant political pugilist.

As a small-state governor from a miniature family dynasty, Sununu has a middling hand to play. He’s not Ron DeSantis who, by virtue of having Florida as a base for raising money, bullying businesses, and waging cultural war, is guaranteed instant prominence in the 2024 GOP presidential circus.

But Sununu has something DeSantis doesn’t: An everyday-guy likability, a lively sense of humor, and a devil-may-care attitude about the usual political curbs and cautions. Witness his recent joke about Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia. Musing about the fur-fringed coat MTG wore for her heckle-the-president State of the Union activities — or the “fur thing,” as he put it — Sununu quipped that “she looked like she belonged on the top of Mount Washington.”

Sununu has a political profile with the potential to appeal not just to traditional, non-MAGA Republicans, but to independents alienated by Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election results.

If the four-term Granite State governor does run, he would obviously be a long shot. Yet that status imparts a certain political freedom. Sununu knows how to get attention — and in recent days he has been doing it by declaring that Trump is a figure of the past who cannot defeat Democratic incumbent and presumptive candidate Joe Biden in 2024.

That’s very different from the keep-your-powder-dry posture of DeSantis or the polite time-to-turn-the-generational-page pitch of former UN ambassador and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who just announced her own candidacy.

So why Sununu’s bait-the-bear approach?

Simple: Candor commands attention. Saying what many elected Republicans think but few are willing to utter about Trump gets Sununu far more notice than he’d earn by simply talking policy. That will be doubly true if Trump, a reflexive counterattacker, responds with an angry roar. So far, in an uncharacteristic display of restraint, he hasn’t.

Either way, Sununu has turned ears his way with an argument the GOP needs to hear.

Not without some awkward moments, mind you. Pressed on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on whether, after the events of Jan. 6, 2021, he would support Trump if he were nominated again in 2024, Sununu essentially said he would, noting that as a lifelong Republican, he will back the party’s nominee. That, however, is probably the rhetorical ante any Republican aspirant has to offer up to join the GOP’s presidential poker game.

Sununu can count several other assets. First, he’s a governor, and voters tend to like governors because they see them as mini-presidents. Granted, he governs a small state, but it’s one whose flinty fiscal values and socially libertarian bent give its 48-year-old chief executive a set of symbolic principles for packaging his might-be candidacy.

Second, New Hampshire remains the first primary on the Republican calendar. Would a victory there by a home-state candidate be treated as significant?

Yes, for two reasons: Because Trump won the Granite State in both 2016 and 2020, a victory there for Sununu — or for anyone else — would mark a clear, headline-commanding change and because in the various times when New Hampshire voters have gone for a candidate from the state next door — Mike Dukakis in 1988, Paul Tsongas in 1992, John Kerry in 2004, Mitt Romney in 2012, and Bernie Sanders in 2016 — their wins have been treated as momentum-generating victories.

Then there is this question: Can a candidate whose position on abortion generally falls within pro-choice parameters win the GOP nomination? In previous cycles, the answer would have been a simple no.

But now that the US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, Sununu would at least have a way to sidestep the matter. How? By saying that abortion is an issue he would leave to the individual states. That wouldn’t please either side, but it is a politically plausible stand in a way it wouldn’t have been before the court’s Dobbs decision.

In sum, then, Chris Sununu would be an interesting Republican candidate, one who would bring a unique profile and perspective to the race.

Here’s hoping he gets in.

Sununu has turned ears his way with an argument the GOP needs to hear.