In Maryland, my domicile if you must know, Larry Hogan is running for a US Senate seat. I’m compelled to comment on it for what reason, I cannot tell. He’s apparently competitive at least but there’s no slam dunk that I’ve heard up to now. Tidbits from his campaign message have struck me as odd, normally losing messages, and yet in twisted blue Maryland, maybe that’s what he needs, and yet, I have doubts about this, so I record my thoughts to see how they play the morning after, November 6th.
Larry was a good governor. He ran the state fiscally conservative, was enormously popular even for a blue state but the blue is mostly compliments of three very dense urban centers: Baltimore City, Prince Georges and Montgomery County. The rest is ‘purple’ at best and much is quite red. Hogan came off as a solid conservative all the way up to Covid and Trump’s 2020 campaign after which we gradually learned just how ‘never-Trumper’ he was and is. This has also become the basis of his Senate campaign. Trump didn’t figure into his gubernatorial campaigns so who knew?
Larry wanted to be President. As he left his 2nd and last term as governor, his hand-picked successor was bigly humiliated in the primary in favor of a Trump friendly option, sort of a double gut punch for him. He went on all the talk shows, became the darling of the left for being a Republican that hated Trump and was thus loved, coddled, and stroked. He believed he would be the great white knight savior of the Republicans, hero to his party, respected by his Democrat peers. Who better to unite the bigoted backward Trumpers with the beholden Democrats and form a new more perfect union? The middle of the ‘middle’ or so he and like-minded others like to think, the moderate, the astute, the steady hand of reason among the wild unwashed. It was all fun and games until he bombed out in the polls (+/-1%) , dropping his nascent plans to run in earnest. It’s hard to imagine the beating an ego takes when the numbers are so at odds with the dream. Larry’s biggest miscalculation was confusing Maryland politics with national politics. Maryland has chosen numerous Republican governors over the years, and I don’t fully understand the geo-dynamics that cause this, but I do know those rules hit a hard stop at the Mason Dixon and the southern line of Dixie.
Upon leaving the governor’s mansion, Hogan considered a Senate run and declined the notion, did some soul searching, said he was more of an executive type. He later changed his mind and got into the race late from whence he’s shown a fighting chance, which brings us to his campaign. My impressions here are based solely on his campaign advertisements where he prominently asserts his distance from Trump even though Trump has endorsed him. He’s quick to affirm his advocacy for a national abortion measure. He slobbers all over Democrat Maryland as if the Republican party has nothing to do with it. But his biggest campaign calling card is how much he hates Trump. Trump is his primary campaign issue which also tells you a lot about Maryland Democrats. Seems a bit unseemly to me. Obviously, he knows campaigning in a way I never could and yet in other states across the Union, dissing Trump and pandering to Democrats has yielded much disappointment for those that went that route. But I also go back to Hogan the governor. I do not recall him groveling to the Democrat party, which btw, is now far more radical then even back those few short years ago, but there he is now, down on his knees.
What’s Ronald Reagan got to do with this? First, no one could ever imagine Ronald Reagan getting down and figuratively licking Democrat’s feet to get elected. In Larry’s mind, he seems to equate Reagan with the old Republican party he knew and loved. My question to Larry is, did you ever really look and see what Ronald Regan actually did? Did you really look at who his followers were? Quite a lot of them look just like Trump followers. Looks a lot like America-First to me. I’d ask Larry, what really do you find so despicable about Trump? I’ve never heard a plausible explanation. Are you too so shallow that you’re still shook up by those mean tweets he used to do? I’ll give you two reasons why you think he’s deplorable: One, you see yourself as erudite and sophisticated and you see Trump as a base ignoramus because of his followers, adherents, and voters. The reality is that Trump is academically superior to you, far more successful and wealthy than you (which doesn’t matter to me but I’m pretty sure it matters to you), attained far more than you’ll ever achieve politically, and [buckle up], may, in the history books, end up being even more consequential of a leader than even Reagan, your idol. Can you blame us deplorables for our preference here Larry? Two, you got the whole of mainstream media to love you, and you fell for it, hook, line, sinker; but its conditional, contingent on hating Trump. I really think it’s no more complicated than that.
I hope Larry wins. Even if his sole function is to put a big R on a Senate seat, it’ll be worth it. God knows we’ll need it in any event, if Trump wins, or God help us is Kamala is declared the winner [which I confidently declare will only happen if by massive voting fraud]. That one single R could be the only thing that saves constitutional America. If for no other reason than that, I’ll support you.
If you’d like to comment on this post, feel free to do so on Twitter. Follow me: @leestanNEreader