Lara Trump, Larry Hogan, and the Trump Era of Losing At Any Cost

Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD)

If there is a defining trait about the Trump Era of the Republican Party, it is that they are very good at "saying the quiet part out loud."  Trump politics has never valued finesse, partially because it's modeled on a petty, boorish man, but also because it's not all that sophisticated.  This is why Senator Mitch McConnell (someone who values pragmatism in his politics, even if he doesn't in his policy) stands out as a relic in the Trump Era where you say whatever you want, and think about the consequences after the fact.

This was underlined recently when RNC Chair Lara Trump was interviewed on CNN about Gov. Larry Hogan's assertion that Americans "respect the verdict" when it comes to Donald Trump being convicted of 34 felonies last week.  Trump said to CNN's Kasie Hunt, "I don't support what he just said there" and refused to confirm to Hunt that she would support Hogan, and that "he deserves the respect of no one in America."  After a week of listening, Hogan's statements ended up being the only really major condemnation of Trump from Republicans.  Even "moderate" Republican Senators like Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, & Susan Collins couldn't condemn it on the face (Collins outright lied about DA Alvin Bragg), so Hogan was the only serious Republican on the ballot or in Congress in 2024 that said anything of note honoring the judicial system...making it easier for Republicans like Chair Trump to go after him.

Listen, Larry Hogan's reelection prospects are likely not ruined by the RNC.  I have not been shy about the fact that I think this is a "waste of time" contest.  Hogan will do exponentially better in Maryland than Trump, maybe by about 10-15 points...but he'll still lose by double digits at the end of the day.  Maryland is not a purple or light blue state-it is deep blue, and short of a major scandal, there's nothing that will stop Angela Alsobrooks from being the state's next senator.

RNC Chair Lara Trump

But Hogan is also a two-term former governor, and making the race more competitive than it has any right to be.  Mitch McConnell and the NRSC heavily recruited Hogan to run, and he's a darling of donors, raising significant cash.  Pissing them off comes at a price, and just because he's a longshot doesn't mean the RNC should be discrediting and making life harder for him.  You don't see Jaime Harrison going after Lucas Kunce in Missouri or Jennifer McCormick in Indiana, even if they have no chance of actually winning.  If he was asked in an interview, even if Kunce or McCormick were taking moderate stances, Harrison would have no issue saying they are the Democratic nominees, and that he supports them wholeheartedly.  That Lara Trump (and by proxy, Donald Trump) won't has always been the single biggest blackmail card Trump has ever played on the Republican Party-he doesn't care if they succeed.

Trump has never been a candidate that seemed to particularly care about public issues.  Look at candidates like Barack Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, even Trump administration figures like Mike Pence & Nikki Haley.  It was easy to understand where they stood on issues, and they went into an election with some core principles.  How sturdy those principles were depended (Pence, in particular, sold those principles on a river when it meant a promotion), but they were there.  Hillary Clinton is going to be pro-choice whether or not it's popular...John McCain was going to be aggressively pro-NATO, even if that wasn't popular.  And most strikingly-they're all partisan politicians-they all want their party to succeed, even if that success doesn't directly impact them electorally, or it means that they might not always get publicly fawned over by moderates in their party trying to stake a middle ground.

Trump's only issue that he really cares about his own self-aggrandizement.  And while in the case of Larry Hogan that likely doesn't cost the Republicans anything (other than making it harder to recruit future Larry Hogan's who won't want to bother), it has in the past.  I remember in the wake of the 2020 election, the biggest disappointment was that the Democrats hadn't won seats in Iowa, North Carolina, & Maine, and so the Senate was lost.  Technically the Republicans hadn't secured the Senate yet (there were still two runoffs in Georgia), but Georgia had barely gone for Joe Biden, and the country loves balance-both Kelly Loeffler & David Perdue were headed to reelection.

And I maintain to this day that that would have been the case if Donald Trump gave a damn about their reelections.  If Trump merely conceded, said he lost, and that Republicans should come out in Georgia to make sure there was a check against President Biden, the Republicans hold the Senate in 2021 and most of the major achievements of the Biden administration (Inflation Reduction Act, Respect for Marriage Act, Ketanji Brown Jackson) don't happen.  But Trump didn't care if Loeffler or Perdue won-he just wanted to continue his false narrative that he had won.  In the process, he lost them both their races, and Democrats got the most progressive trifecta since the 1960's.  I am confident that those two races have not left Mitch McConnell's mind since...and Trump hasn't thought about them once.

This attitude is unhealthy for the Republican Party.  It has cost them in 2020 and 2022, with the Republicans favoring weaker candidates that have to put Trump first, even when that means their own reelection prospects suffer.  Larry Hogan is the best recent example of this, but a Republican Party that only values Trump can only win in places that value Trump, and with their House majority, specifically, riding on the need for at least a few Republicans to win in Joe Biden districts...Lara Trump's "Trump or else" threat comes with a lot of extra anchors put around the Republicans' ability to succeed down-ballot.