This week, phrase started trickling by social media that Gov. Kevin Stitt is taking a look at a presidential run. Whereas there isn’t any official affirmation that Stitt is contemplating this idiot’s errand, he’s making the strikes that every one starry-eyed conservative politicians make when plotting a White Home transfer.
On Tuesday, Stitt met with Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Gilad Erdan — you understand, like all Midwestern governors do when they’re going concerning the enterprise of Midwestern governance. Since conservatives have made unequivocal help for Israel a litmus check for advancing up the political meals chain, this appeared like a field test.
Whereas in Washington, D.C., he additionally met with U.S. Secretary of the Military and the Military Chief of Employees Normal James C. McConville, which might arguably be about continued help of Fort Sill and different state installations.
However Stitt additionally reportedly sat down with pastors in our state to debate the potential for a 2024 run, so from this level ahead, one of the best ways to view Stitt’s actions is thru the prism of a presidential hopeful.
OPINION by George Lang
Personally, I don’t see Stitt getting anyplace on the highway to the White Home. As an archconservative politician in an more and more arch, more and more conservative state, Stitt nonetheless barely ekes out an approval score within the low 50s. Desultory numbers at dwelling don’t sometimes represent a launching pad to the nationwide stage.
And make no mistake, Stitt earned these numbers by being on the mistaken aspect of tribal sovereignty and the McGirt resolution, lifting the moratorium on executions, signing a invoice prohibiting the instructing of Crucial Race Principle, shopping for $2 million price of hydroxychloroquine that was totally nugatory within the remedy of COVID-19, increasing gun possession and being a putz when he staged a barbecue in entrance of a Folks for the Moral Remedy of Animals (PETA) signal.
That occasion, specifically, felt just like the form of polarized grandstanding one does when making an attempt to curry favor with the chronically aggrieved citizenry that now kind the bottom of the Republican Occasion.
Stitt seemingly has an outsized notion of each his recognition at dwelling and potential political worth on the nationwide degree. However final yr, he employed a communications staffer from the Nationwide Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) to construct an adversarial relationship with state media. As The Washington Publish’s Dave Weigel likes to tweet each time a trial balloon floats previous his periphery, “He’s working.”
So what’s Stitt’s worth as a nationwide candidate? As a lot as I hate to additional diminish Oklahoma within the eyes of the nation, our state merely doesn’t have the strategic significance the GOP values proper now. Nationwide strategists will have a look at Stitt and a equally retrograde chowderhead like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and say, “Now we have Oklahoma. We’d like Florida.”
By the point candidates begin pestering diner patrons in Iowa and New Hampshire, the discuss goes to be about who can take Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. It will likely be about purple states like Arizona and perhaps Texas. From a strategic aspect, the governor of Oklahoma enjoys no pull with these states — particularly Texas.
Stitt has weaponized wedge points since taking workplace and his largely dismissive COVID-19 insurance policies and gun advocacy are actually engaging to the Qanon-adjacent conservative citizens, however it isn’t sure Stitt has any extra nationwide worth than somebody like U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas.
By the best way, if there may be any means we will get these two to sq. off in a science bee, it must be achieved.
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Final Up to date June 16, 2023, 1:52 PM by Brett Dickerson – Editor
The publish Stitt doesn’t have political capital or native recognition to enter nationwide stage appeared first on Oklahoma Metropolis Free Press.
