Proves He’s Not The ‘Small Government’ Republican He Pretends To Be
“I’m a small-government, you know, common-sense conservative, and to me, [DeSantis’ governance] sounds like big government and authoritarian: ‘You have to agree with me, and I’m going to tell you what you can and can’t do,’” Hogan told host Chuck Todd.
Hogan wants voters to think he believes in keeping the government out of Americans’ matters, but his heavy-handed response to Covid-19 shows that the true “big government and authoritarian” approach to governance happened under his watch in Maryland, not in Florida.
The former chief executive of Maryland is no stranger to criticizing DeSantis for going after big business and the federal government to preserve Americans’ rights. What Hogan doesn’t seem to recognize is that manipulating state authority to doom kids to screens and set them back for decades via school lockdowns isn’t comparable to using existing powers to protect children from the clutches of government-led indoctrination.
While Republican governors such as DeSantis refused to enact or enforce tyrannical measures to satiate the Covid panic porn that drove policy decisions all over the U.S., Hogan urged schools to remain closed, mandated universal masking, and ordered certain state employees to get the Covid jab or risk losing their jobs.
Those who didn’t comply, Hogan promised, would be punished by the state government. Others were also smeared by Hogan, who declared that refusing to comply with his mask mandates was the equivalent of claiming a constitutional right to drive drunk.
Hogan didn’t just keep these damaging policies well into 2022; he exploited Maryland’s state-of-emergency protocols to prolong them. After two years of evidence that government-mandated lockdowns, masks, and jabs don’t stop the virus from spreading, Hogan issued several executive orders endowing his bureaucracy with more overreach powers. That’s not a “small government” move.
