Two versions of Don Bolduc, the hard one and a slightly softer one, are running against New Hampshire’s incumbent Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan in the November election. Neither version makes much sense. First he said the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. Then he said it wasn’t. Then he said he wasn’t sure. First he said he was inalterably opposed to abortion. Then he said New Hampshire’s 24-week allowance for terminating a pregnancy was, well, okay.
We’re seeing here the struggles of an inept Republican candidate going all out to win a primary by telling MAGA voters what they wanted to hear, then shifting to a milder version of himself to appeal to the general electorate. Bolduc’s jarring transformation has left the impression of Jekyll and Hyde. His strangest post-primary move has been to recruit Tulsi Gabbard, the former Congresswoman from Hawaii who has just left the Democratic party, to campaign with him. Widely known as a Putin apologist, Gabbard told Fox News last March that America and Russia “are not so different” in their suppression of free speech. She opposes more U.S. aid to war-beleaguered Ukraine. And so, it now appears, does Bolduc.
An unnamed GOP insider, quoted last November by the NH Journal, may have put his finger on the problem when he said of Bolduc, “He was a lousy candidate when he was sane….Running as a lunatic isn’t much of an improvement.” Don Bolduc does not belong in public office, let alone the U.S. Senate.
Robert Gillette
Ossipee