AND HE'LL BRING THE WHOLE TICKET WITH HIM:

Sununu didn't give McConnell the courtesy of a heads up. "He found out when you did," Sununu said during Tuesday's presser. Sources say it was to keep the news secret. ("If we told them, it would have leaked immediately," one insider said.) But it could also have been a reminder of Sununu's fundamental point about being a governor and not a senator.

When you're governor, you only make the calls you want to make.

Sununu brags about being transparent, and it's true -- though not exactly the way he means it. Sununu is transparently pro-Sununu. If his goals line up with the Republican Party's goals, as they did during the 2020 campaign, that's great. But if they don't, if the state party with a thin bench needs him to take on a weak, incumbent Democrat for the good of the GOP cause, but it's not part of his plan -- that's OK with Sununu, too.

In a state like New Hampshire, loosely holding your partisan affiliations is smart politics. Sen. Maggie Hassan, whose entire brand is "generic Democrat" is about to find that out. When Sununu says "there are plenty of Republicans who can beat Hassan," he's not bragging about the talent of the GOP field. He's simply pointing out the political weakness of Hassan.

In 2018, a blue wave washed through the Granite State. Sununu survived. He had a brand beyond the GOP.

In 2022, assuming trends continue, a red wave will hit New Hampshire. Why would any non-Democrat vote for Hassan? She won't even have the fake "abortion ban" issue. She'll just have Joe Biden, inflation, trillion-dollar spending deals, and vaccine mandates. She isn't even independent enough to speak out against the Biden administration's plan to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to illegal immigrant families separated at the border -- an absolutely killer issue among the blue-collar voters her party is already losing so badly.

For the moment, Democrats are determined not to learn the lesson. Their messaging on Tuesday was full of "whistle-past-the-graveyard" bravado.

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