Stand up and cheer, Republicans, for another one of your milquetoast tyrants might soon head to the U.S. Senate. But at least this particular milquetoast tyrant would flip a Democratic seat and help the GOP regain its Senate majority.
A new Washington Post / University of Maryland poll released Wednesday showed former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland holding double-digit leads over a pair of potential Democratic challengers in the state’s 2024 U.S. Senate race.
Should Hogan prevail in November, he would replace the sitting three-term Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin. The 67-year-old Hogan, who served as governor from 2015 to 2023, announced his Senate run last month.
To understand the sort of politician Hogan has to have been in order to win two gubernatorial elections, keep in mind that Maryland rates as perhaps the swamp-iest state in the Union.
According to 2020 census data, Maryland boasts an overall population slightly north of 6 million people. Montgomery County and Prince George’s County — suburbs of Washington, D.C. — together account for more than two million of those residents. Another 854,000 people live in Baltimore County, the state’s third-largest.
In other words, nearly half of the state’s residents, including thousands of federal employees, live in three deep-blue counties. Small wonder that President Joe Biden carried the state by more than 33 percentage points in 2020.
To win elections as a Republican in Maryland, therefore, Hogan has to have served the establishment, or at least have sounded as non-threatening to it as possible; hence the “milquetoast” label.
Hogan, as one might expect, tends to mistake conspicuous, virtue-signaling bipartisanship for an expression of actual principles.
“I am running for the United States Senate — not to serve one party — but to stand up to both parties, fight for Maryland, and fix our nation’s broken politics,” Hogan wrote Feb. 9 in a post to X.
“Like the exhausted majority of Marylanders, I’m completely fed up with politics as usual,” he said in an accompanying video announcing his Senate candidacy. “The politicians in Washington seem to be more interested in arguing than in actually getting anything done for the people they represent.”
I am running for the United States Senate – not to serve one party – but to stand up to both parties, fight for Maryland, and fix our nation’s broken politics. It’s what I did as Maryland’s governor, and it’s exactly how I’ll serve Maryland in the Senate. Let’s get back to work. pic.twitter.com/d0TuZchAtN
— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) February 9, 2024
Longtime political observers will recognize all the expected phrases: “fix our nation’s broken politics,” “politics as usual” and “getting anything done for the people.” None of it means much. Unfortunately, that kind of empty jargon usually suggests a candidate who will vote with the establishment. And in 2024 a candidate who votes with the establishment is often indistinguishable from a tyrant.
In January, for instance, when we all still felt compelled to pretend that the Republican presidential primary held any real drama, Hogan endorsed establishment darling Nikki Haley over former President Donald Trump.
Thus, as a senator, Hogan probably would vote with establishment warmongers who want to send more money to Ukraine.
Likewise, Hogan has regurgitated establishment lies about the Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021.
“It was an insurrection. It was the worst assault on democracy in our country’s history,” Hogan said in a 2022 interview.
Thus, as a senator, Hogan likely would join other cowardly GOP liars in supporting the FBI.
Indeed, as governor during the COVID pandemic, Hogan showed tyrannical credentials of his own.
“You wear the mask,” the then-governor said at a Nov. 2020 news conference. “There’s no constitutional right to walk around without a mask.”
Apparently Hogan does not understand how constitutions work. He seems to think that if a right does not appear in a constitution, it does not exist. But sovereign people use constitutions to grant power to their governments. Therefore, if a power does not appear in a constitution, it does not exist.
In other words, a tyrant lives in Hogan’s soul. Thus, a majority of Republican voters nationwide may rightly find the Maryland GOP Senate candidate repellent.
Could Larry Hogan win?
Nonetheless, some good news remains. Hogan might be a terrible Republican, but he is not a Democrat. His victory in November, therefore, would bring the GOP one seat closer to a Senate majority.
Likewise, even establishment Republicans have done some good when they have behaved like Republicans. One thinks of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham fiercely defending then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, or Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky keeping now-Attorney General Merrick Garland off the high court.
In short, Hogan has behaved like a milquetoast tyrant and will probably continue to do so. But that should not prevent us from finding silver linings in his Senate candidacy.
