Predictions that former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump’s becoming co-chair of the Republican National Committee would streamline the party even more narrowly around Trump’s worldview and fixations are already coming true. Note Lara Trump’s disparagement of (and threats against) former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, for saying in a statement after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty last week: “I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process. At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders — regardless of party — must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship. We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”
On CNN on Sunday, the RNC co-chair called Hogan’s statement “ridiculous” and said he “doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point and, quite frankly, anybody in America.” Such a response to such an anodyne statement shows how Lara Trump’s tenure is ushering new layers of groupthink into the GOP. The irony is that a monomaniacal focus on forcing the party to walk in lockstep with Trump threatens to undermine his own prospects of power.
Lara Trump’s tenure is ushering new layers of groupthink into the GOP.
Hogan’s position was at odds with the position of Trump and most of the GOP, which is that Trump’s trial was a political conspiracy engineered to send him to prison and block him from reaching the White House again.
That shouldn’t be a surprise. Hogan is that exceedingly rare breed of Republican who has consistently criticized Trump and taken some moderate policy positions. As the governor of a deep-blue state during the Covid pandemic, Hogan developed a national reputation as a believer in Covid public health protocols, and he was a strident critic of Trump’s handling of the issue. His approach as a Senate candidate is to strike an independent tone and add more moderate or even liberal-leaning positions to his conservative ones, such as pivoting leftward on the issue of abortion and identifying himself as “pro-choice.” And now another way he’s marked himself as independent-minded within his party is to call for the verdict in Trump’s case to be respected.
Hogan’s statement was too much for Lara Trump, though. Asked whether the RNC would withhold financial support to Hogan’s campaign, she declined to rule it out: “I’ll get back to you on all the specifics monetarily. But what I can tell you is that, as the Republican Party co-chair, I think he should never have said something like that.”
Hogan was a wildly popular governor in Maryland, and if he were to win a seat in the Senate it would be nothing short of a coup for the GOP. Sure, Hogan might defy the GOP on some issues, but he’d caucus with it and most likely support it on some key legislation — despite hailing from a deeply Democratic state. In this political era, the Senate is decided by the slimmest of margins; one Senate seat can determine whether a president will make era-defining appointments and pass legacy-defining legislation or be rendered politically impotent. But Lara Trump’s harsh response suggests she’s far less interested in governance than she is in protecting the cult of Trump.
Lara Trump could’ve expressed disagreement with Hogan’s statement while acknowledging that he would be a critical asset to the party and that he has conservative views on some issues that the RNC cares about. Instead she suggested that Hogan's calling for people to respect the legal system is a potential deal-breaker — and possibly worth the GOP being stuck as a minority party in the Senate. Whether or not she decides to cut organizational and financial ties with Hogan, the severity of her rhetoric alone shows a willingness to stigmatize Hogan — and sour him on working with the GOP in the future — in order to enforce a political culture of total submission to Trump’s worldview. That worldview is pretty simple these days: Everything that serves Trump’s sense of entitlement is right; everything that threatens to undermine it is wrong.
Lara Trump’s reaction to Hogan doesn’t necessarily mean he faces worse odds in winning a Senate seat. It could even be something that works subtly to his advantage in a state that voted for Joe Biden over Trump by over 30 points. But it does reflect how much Trump world’s mission is individualistic, myopic and unconcerned with getting anything done except returning Trump to his throne, even if it means hurting every other Republican whose help he’d need if he wanted to pass legislation.
