Gov. Larry Hogan is starting to sound like the second coming of Eugene McCarthy.
Remember McCarthy? He was the Democratic senator out of Minnesota who decided to challenge a sitting president from his own party, Lyndon Johnson, back in 1968 when he determined Johnson was pulling the country apart.
Now we’ve got the Republican Hogan talking about challenging the Republican President Donald Trump, who’s doing his own job at pulling the country apart.
In McCarthy’s case, he saidJohnson’s handling of the war in Vietnam was to blame. In the case againstTrump, let us count all the ways he’s tearing the country apart.
Wait, we haven’t got all day.
Let’s just go with what Hogan’ssaying – that he’s “disturbed” by the Mueller report.
In Manchester, N.H., the other day,Hogan spoke to a bunch of political and business leaders and said a “growing”number of Republicans are urging him to launch a primary election challengeagainst Trump.
Then, he told a group of reporters, including The Sun’s Luke Broadwater, “There was some very disturbing stuff found in the [Mueller] report. Just because aides did not follow his orders – that’s the only reason why we don’t have obstruction of justice.”
Hogan said to Broadwater in an interview, “Did he obstruct justice? He tried to. Of course he did. He attempted to over and over again.”
If the idea of Hogan as the Republican presidential nominee sounds like a long shot – and it certainly does – nobody gave McCarthy a chance either. And though he didn’t get the nomination, McCarthy’s Democratic primary support was so widespread, and so passionate, that Johnson ultimately stunned the nation by withdrawing from the race in that frantic election of 1968.
The Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, ultimately defeated the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
Could Hogan set off the same kindof response? In the aftermath of the Mueller report, new polling has Trumpfalling to 39 percent favorability and 57 percent unfavorable.
But would his numbers drop even lower if he were forced to run against a challenger from his own party, like Hogan or former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld (who announced his candidacy earlier this month)? The famously unyielding Trump base sometimes seems to stand by him not necessarily because they love him, but because they dislike anyone at all who’s a Democrat.
But their support has been strongenough that almost no Republican – Mitt Romney and Susan Collins are exceptions– has criticized Trump despite the critical findings in the Mueller report.
That alone marks Hogan as a voice worth hearing.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, is now in paperback.
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