OPINION:
It would be neither fair, nor accurate to characterize two-term Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan as a RINO (“Republican in Name Only”), because he’s governed, for the most part, as a conservative — on fiscal issues at least, if not always on social issues — over the past seven years.
Mr. Hogan, for example, has vetoed scores of bad bills passed by the Democrat-dominated Maryland General Assembly since taking office in January 2015 — including 30 in one day alone last May 28. Regrettably, most of those vetoed bills have become law anyway, because liberal Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the legislature and vote in lockstep to override the vetoes.
That’s why it’s so perplexing to see Mr. Hogan regularly taking gratuitous potshots at former President Donald Trump, a fellow Republican, rather than at Democrats in the Maryland legislature, or at President Biden.
A “Never Trumper,” Mr. Hogan was at it again over the weekend on “Fox News Sunday,” when he said that a second Trump term would be “bad for the country.”
Is Mr. Hogan unaware of the wrecking ball Mr. Biden has taken to the country in just his first 11 months in office — from gas prices that have soared more than $1 a gallon and inflation at a near-40-year high of 6.8% to the tsunami of illegal immigrants flooding unchecked across our open southern borders and his disastrous pullout from Afghanistan?
It’s hard to conceive how a second Trump term could possibly be worse than that.
“I think that’d be bad for the party and bad for President Trump and bad for the country,” Mr. Hogan told host Bret Baier on “Fox News Sunday,” when asked about the prospects of Mr. Trump seeking a return to the Oval Office in 2024. “I don’t think he’s going to run, and my advice would be that he did not run.”
That was doubling down on an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last May, in which Mr. Hogan inexplicably called Mr. Trump’s first term “the worst four years” ever for the Republican Party.
But that claim doesn’t pass the most basic of fact checks, when you consider Mr. Trump’s presidency’s many accomplishments, among them the U.S. achieving energy independence and enjoying the lowest inflation-adjusted gas prices in decades; the jobless rate hitting a 50-year low, including the lowest rates ever among Blacks, Hispanics and women; and 450 miles of new border fencing helping reduce illegal immigration to the lowest levels in decades.
If by “the worst four years,” Mr. Hogan was referring to the never-ending “Russia collusion” witch hunt that dogged the Trump presidency, however, he should redirect his ire at the Democrats and their allies in the liberal media who created and perpetuated that hoax.
Mr. Hogan has said the Republican Party needs to work harder to appeal to moderates, yet he himself has done little to grow the Republican brand across Maryland, which he should have been pursuing throughout his seven years in Annapolis, especially since winning reelection in 2018.
Nor, so far as we can tell, has he expended much effort to recruit a viable GOP candidate to run to succeed him since Lt. Gov. Boyd (“the Man on the Milk Carton”) Rutherford announced in April that he wouldn’t seek to replace his boss next year.
Mr. Hogan — who readily admits he didn’t vote for Mr. Trump in either 2016 or 2020 (instead, casting throwaway write-ins) — was asked by Mr. Baier whether he planned to seek the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, but predictably demurred.
“I’m going to be governor until January of ’23,” he said, “and then, I’m going to take a look at what the options are after that.”
Might we respectfully suggest Mr. Hogan would better serve Maryland — and the other 49 states — by seeking instead to oust Sen. Ben Cardin in 2024? An ultraliberal Democrat, Mr. Cardin, 78, has been suckling at the teat of public office since 1967—longer even than Mr. Biden—and in the Senate since 2007.
Mr. Hogan would do well to start now by redirecting his criticism from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden and Mr. Cardin.
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