All the political air is getting suctioned out of Arkansas right now by Mark Pryor, Tom Cotton, Chris Piazza, Jason Rapert, Wendell Griffen and the ever-embattled private-option form of Medicaid expansion.
A few peripheral gasps were managed in recent weeks.
Those came from Leslie Rutledge, David Sterling, John Burris and a right-wing outfit based in Fayetteville called Conduit for Action. It propped up a fellow calling himself Scott Flippo to punish Burris for bipartisan legislative effectiveness.
Meantime we face the most defining governor's race in the state since 1966.
The outcome may take us to full-bore Oklabama-ism, with Asa Hutchinson. Or it may salvage remnants of the Democratic centrism and pragmatism of Mike Beebe, with Mike Ross.
That race has been lost in the racket and left to run on inertia.
Thus the advantage has gone to Hutchinson.
Inertia, meaning the continued motion of something already in motion, favors the continuing Republican trend in Arkansas.
While Pryor has been able to disturb that inertia in the U.S. Senate race by turning voter attention to the extremism of Cotton, Ross has been unable to get anybody thinking much about Hutchinson as an extremist or someone to fear--or at all.
Ross has spent a little money for a television spot flashing the word "independent" beside his mug shot. He preens that he voted against Obamacare and for guns.
It's an ad by which he could have run for the Republican nomination for attorney general. His message is "me, too," which might invite voters to opt for "me first."
The debate about the private-option form of Medicaid expansion has been a factor in the Asa-advantaged inertia.
Ross is fully committed to working as governor to continue the private option. Hutchinson says he'll do the right thing and that we need, you know, to, uh, study this sonofagun closely.
Discerning observers know that Hutchinson is simply trying to finesse the issue to keep his right flank from frothing.
Discerning observers know he is going to keep the program after putting some conservative-seeming bow on it.
As I've written, because it's true, Hutchinson could succeed more easily than Ross in getting a decisive few Republicans to vote for the private option.
That lets Hutchinson get away with pandering to the right wing while also giving him implied credit for doing the right and pragmatic thing.
Oh, well. Democrats have gotten away with such finesses in Arkansas for decades.
What's getting lost is that there are two actual and defining policy differences between these gubernatorial candidates.
One is that Ross proposes to begin phasing in a $37 million plan to provide free pre-K programs to all the state's 4-year-olds. Hutchinson says, oddly, that pre-K education is "the wrong direction for the state."
Ross advances a premise that the Federal Reserve has long embraced--that it's a worthy investment for our children in the short term, and our economy in the long term, to expand early-childhood programs.
Hutchinson, like many conservatives, resists public education in its early form, perhaps even in its full form.
The second difference centers on the likelihood that the state's voters will confront a ballot issue in November to phase in an increase in the state's minimum wage to $8.50 an hour.
That's still well below what is being advocated federally by Democrats in Congress.
Ross is fully for the state initiative. Hutchinson says he would prefer that the Legislature, not the people, address the issue.
Got that? State Sen. Jason Rapert says the people could and should rule everything.
But Hutchinson says the people shouldn't be trusted with economics, both their own and the state's.
That blatant contradiction provides a plain and simple example of contemporary conservative thought in Arkansas. It's that people ought to get to vote on other people's sex lives, but not their own economic interests.
Ross ought to put aside the "me, too" campaign long enough to mention in television advertising that he favors educational opportunities for young kids and economic aid for poor people.
And he might mention that the other guy opposes one of those and doesn't trust the people on the other.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 06/17/2014