The Republican establishment is serving up two former senators whose political careers peaked before most current voters owned smartphones — and the Associated Press wants you to believe New Hampshire voters are "fine with that."
In New Hampshire's eight-person GOP Senate primary, the top contenders are John Sununu and Scott Brown, both holdovers from a pre-Trump Republican era that voters nationwide have spent a decade rejecting. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, running an AP dispatch, frames the race as voters being "content with their choices" and "poised to pick a familiar name over a fresh face." That's a convenient story for the party apparatus. It's less convenient to ask whether the field was ever structured to give voters a real alternative.
Sununu, running 24 years after a campaign ad declared he "represents the future," is leaning hard on name recognition — his brother Chris is the former governor, and the family brand has dominated New Hampshire Republican politics for a generation. Brown, a grandfather, says that status gives him "an edge" and has focused on emphasizing his own record and accomplishments, the AJC reports. What neither man is offering is the kind of populist disruption that sent Trump to the White House and reshaped the Republican base.
The AJC concedes that "voters elsewhere have embraced a decidedly anti-establishment sentiment this campaign season" — a telling admission buried mid-story, designed to normalize the opposite outcome in New Hampshire.
Meanwhile, the political class shows its enforcement arm in Pennsylvania. Former campaign and Senate staffers for Sen. John Fetterman have launched an anonymous Twitter/X account promising to release dirt on him, the Gateway Pundit reports. Their grievance? Fetterman supports Israel and has criticized the Democratic Socialists of America. The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story the staffers are pouncing on, reported that Fetterman has routinely avoided day-to-day Senate responsibilities — canceling a scheduled visit with three paralyzed military veterans only to appear on Fox News less than an hour later, dismissing a Children's Hospital of Philadelphia meeting request by saying representatives wanted "free trips to D.C.," and refusing to meet with constituents seeking federal flood assistance. He also allegedly skipped a memorial for three fallen police officers after learning it would last three hours.
The staffer account is, naturally, anonymous — "these people don't have the courage or conviction to identify themselves," as the Gateway Pundit noted.
Whether it's New Hampshire Republicans recycling senators from the Bush era or Pennsylvania Democrats deploying hit squads against a senator who broke with the progressive line, the permanent political class has two moves: recycle the reliable, punish the deviant.
The question isn't whether New Hampshire voters are "fine with" familiar names. It's whether the familiar names were ever going to let anyone unfamiliar through the door.
