There’s being delusional, and then there’s being Larry Hogan. The Maryland governor apparently has his sights set on 2024, and he’s decided that the best way to win the coming GOP primary is to hand fodder to the left on a nearly weekly basis.
In early April, that manifested as a direct attack on Gov. Ron DeSantis while appearing on CNN of all places. The latest example comes from an interview where Hogan sat down with Chuck Todd of NBC News, and with a leak pointing to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, he decided now is a good time to surrender that issue and several others.
The arrogance dripping from his answers is astonishing, not because politicians aren’t typically egotistical, but because this guy has no reason to be lecturing anyone.
CHUCK TODD: I want to read you read one of your lines back at you here. “The divide in our party today really isn’t ideological. It’s more of a difference between those who know how to win, and those who only pretend that they won.” Seems like an obvious reference, but explain the line.
GOV. LARRY HOGAN: Well, look, I think our party has been doing a lot of losing and an awful lot of making excuses. And, and so we’ve lost, we lost in the past four years, the White House, the Senate, the House, we lost the governor’s races and state legislative bodies, and I’m tired of losing, you know, Trump said we were going to get tired of winning, we’re going to be winning so much. But all we’re doing is losing.
I’m not sure what planet Hogan lives on, but the GOP overperformed in the House in 2020 and has been on a steady upward climb since then, winning numerous special elections and shocking the nation in Virginia in 2021. The idea that the Republican Party is currently on the downswing and that only Larry Hogan can save it is farcical to the extreme.
But keep in mind, when Hogan talks about winning, he really means losing. That’s exactly what happened in Maryland after a judge overruled the Democrat gerrymander there. A major victory was staring the governor in the face, and all he had to do was not be an absolute coward. Instead of pressing the issue to its conclusion in the courts, though, Hogan decided to settle with the Democrats, allowing another 7-1 Democrat to Republican gerrymander, only slightly solidifying that one Republican district. He then went out and bragged about it as if he had just hit a grand slam.
That is what “winning” looks like to Larry Hogan, and it’s pathetic.
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Moving on, Hogan also claimed in the interview that talking about abortion is not “politically smart” for Republicans. With the pro-life movement on the cusp of a victory 50 years in the making, possibly saving millions of lives in the process, he’s ready to wave the white flag and once again accept the false premise that winning is actually losing. If that doesn’t encapsulate how useless of a politician he is, nothing does.
Hogan also attacked Ron DeSantis again, proclaiming that’s not his “kind of conservatism.” Yeah, we know Larry. Your kind of conservatism is handing Democrats victory after victory, not standing up for children during COVID-19, and mumbling about lower taxes every once in a while.
I’ll end with this excerpt, as I think it really brings to light the fantasyland that Hogan exists in.
CHUCK TODD: You want to win the right way, right? Don’t you wanna win honestly?
GOV. LARRY HOGAN: I want to elect the right people and win the right way. I’m afraid that we will have a huge year, Republicans will take back the House, if not the Senate, probably at least the House. And I don’t want to misinterpret that into thinking — we shouldn’t get into a false sense of complacency because we still haven’t fixed the underlying problems that have caused us to lose, we’re simply going to win because the Democrats have failed so badly. And they’ve moved so far to the left, that most of America is going to swing back.
On other potential GOP presidential contenders: “I think they’re all going to be trying to fish for the most part in the same pond … I think there’s another lane of people that would like to go in a different direction.”
Again, winning is losing for Hogan. He admits that the GOP is likely to clean up in November, but then insists that those victories shouldn’t be misinterpreted as…victories. Best we revert back to whatever the heck he’s doing in Maryland, right? That’ll really ensure the American people are on our side going forward.
As to this idea that he’s going to cruise in 2024 on some mythical moderate lane, he might as well be sniffing glue. There is no constituency for what Hogan is selling in the GOP. This guy needs to be laughed off the stage not in 2024, but in 2023. Hogan’s probable presidential campaign has no reason to even make it to the first primary. He’s that bad, and the Republican Party should have zero use for politicians like him.
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