Is Larry Hogan Living in a Fantasy World?
Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, gave a speech this month at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, in which he declared that the GOP was “desperately in need of a course correction.” He called on the so-called Party of Reagan to end its dependency on Donald Trump and return to the heyday of the 40th president, Hogan’s hero. “America can once again be that shining city on a hill that Reagan talked about,” he told a politely nodding assembly of a few hundred guests. He spoke with an aura of sentimental duty, in the shadow of the same Air Force One that Reagan had ridden 660,000 miles on as president. He mentioned Big Tent conservatism, after-hours drinks with Tip O’Neill, the whole bit.
Oh, bless your heart, governor.
At almost that precise hour in Cincinnati, Ohio’s just-declared for the U.S. Senate, J. D. Vance, was engulfing favorite former president in a rhetorical bear hug. “They wanted to write a story that this campaign would be the death of Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda,” said Vance, the author who had previously but was now quite obviously hooked himself. “It ain’t the death of the ‘America First’ agenda,” Vance said, fulminating against “the clowns out there in political world” and singling out Trump, Tucker Carlson,
