Governor Chris Sununu (R-NH) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Republicans should not try to pass laws on cultural issues because it is “trying to beat the Democrats at being big government authoritarians.”
MARGARET BRENNAN: You’ve been talking about trying to sort of remind the party that Republicans are about limited government. You said recently, ‘Republicans are almost trying to outdo Democrats at their own game of being big government and having a solution and a say on everything.’ Who were you thinking of when you say that?
SUNUNU: Oh, there’s a lot- I think there’s a lot of leadership out there that forgets- at heart, I’m a principled free market conservative. Let the markets decide. So there’s no individual per se, but there’s a lot of leadership that says, you know what, when we’re not getting that result out of a private business or locality we’ll just impose from the top-down our conservative will.
BRENNAN: You’re not talking about the Florida governor and Disney for example, are you?
SUNUNU: Yeah, that’s- one of the many examples you see out there.
BRENNAN: Ron DeSantis may be running for president as well.
SUNUNU: Sure, yeah, yeah. Look, Ron’s a very good governor, he is, but I’m just trying to remind folks what we are at our core. And if we’re trying to beat the Democrats at being big government authoritarians, remember what’s going to happen. Eventually, they’ll have power in a state or in a position and then they’ll start penalizing conservative businesses and conservative nonprofits and conservative ideas. That is the worst precedent in the world. That’s exactly what the founding fathers tried not to- tried to avoid. And so I’m trying to remind my conservative friends about federalism, free markets and being for the voter first, being for the individual. Do I like what every private business says? No, I hate this woke cancel culture. But it’s a cultural–
BRENNAN: What does that mean to you then?
SUNUNU: Woke cancel culture?
BRENNAN: Yeah.
SUNUNU: Oh, it’s- it’s- look, it’s–
BRENNAN: Because you’re not a culture warrior, really–
SUNUNU: No, no, but it’s there.
BRENNAN: What does woke- What does that mean in your platform?
SUNUNU: It’s the- it’s the divisiveness- divisiveness, we see not just in our schools, but in our communities. Where it is me versus you. Whereas if you are not adhering to my ideals, then I’m going to cancel you out. It is us versus them. It is this binary, where everything’s a war. That’s a cultural problem we have to fix in America and it starts with good leadership, good messaging, more hopeful and optimistic, but government never solves a cultural problem.
BRENNAN: Okay. well–
SUNUNU: We can lead on it but we never solve it.
BRENNAN: Interesting idea, but you are contradicted by the Republican governor of Arkansas, who gave the response for your party after the State of the Union, who embraced culture war. She says America’s in one.
SUNUNU: Yes we are.
BRENNAN: She says it’s been waged by the left-wing, ‘a woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is.’
SUNUNU: That’s absolutely right–
BRENNAN: Are you going to engage on things like this? Like- like Sanders and DeSantis has in terms of issues on gender and issues of race?
SUNUNU: There should be absolute leadership on that, about what that’s about. And this idea that, you know, you have to- you know, we have forced language, that we have forced ideas on our kids that we’re going to force anything–-
BRENNAN: So you are going to be a culture warrior?
SUNUNU: No, we have to talk about that, but it isn’t the government’s role to solve it. The government is not here to solve your problems. It’s not. The government is here to–
BRENNAN: So, governors shouldn’t be actually talking and engaging and telling school boards and doing things like this or trying to pass laws like they are?
SUNUNU: I don’t think governors should be trying to pass laws to subvert the will of the voters that know better than us. Voters are no more than I do. The voters on that school board know, the voters in those towns know a lot more. And if- that’s the free market of politics. If they don’t like the school board, they get- they go to town meeting, they fire them.
