The field for the 2024 presidential race on the GOP side of the ticket just shrank by one.
Larry Hogan, the former governor of Maryland and one of the biggest anti-Trumpers in the party, has decided not to run, reports CNN.
Logan has been among those insisting that he will run against Trump to save the country from bad orange man 2.0, but now he is backing down.
This tells me several different things.
Smart Move
First and foremost, Hogan's ego is not getting in the way here, unlike many of the other people that will eventually enter this race.
Looking at this from the anti-Trump perspective, they need as few candidates in the race as possible if DeSantis runs to take out Trump. A crowded field means an easy Trump win.
To his credit, Hogan gets this and rather than enjoy another 15 minutes of fame, he is backing out. I believe he has, at the very least, had a conversation with DeSantis and is confident he will be running.
In announcing his decision not to run, Hogan, stated, "I did give it serious consideration, and I talked to people everywhere, and I talked to my family, and it was a tough decision, but I've decided that I will not be a candidate for the Republican nomination for president," reports Fox News.
"It's really mostly about the country and about the party. The personal decision – it was like, I didn't need that job. I didn't need to run for another office… I was considering it because I thought it was a public service, and maybe I could make a difference.
"I didn't want to have a pileup of a bunch of people fighting. Right now, you have Trump and DeSantis at the top of the field soaking up all of the oxygen, getting all of the attention. And then a whole lot of the rest of us in single digits. And the more of them you have, the less chance you have for somebody rising up."
I do not like Hogan, never have, but he served his state well because it was a left-leaning base and he managed to get a GOP governor in the mansion and have amazingly good approval ratings in the process.
To me, he is more left than right, and I cannot stand his arrogance leading up to this point that he was going to be the man to save the country.
At least he recognized the situation, compared to someone like Asa Hutchinson, who has encouraged more people to run, which is an idiotic move if they really are focused solely on stopping Trump.
I think we are going to see Hogan start to work the crowd at this point and talk people into not running, especially if he is assured that DeSantis will be entering the race.
In my opinion, Hogan's announcement not to run is the biggest story of this election cycle so far. He knows something, he just is not spilling the beans quite yet.
