Partisans beware: Pragmatic centrism may find its way onto the 2020 Republican presidential ticket.
Gov. Larry Hogan, the moderate Republican governor of Maryland, is considering challenging President Trump in the 2020 GOP primary. With Trump’s disapproval rating hovering around 54 percent, Republicans may want a poised, moderate figure like Hogan to represent them in 2020 rather than someone so polarizing.
But one issue will most certainly hold Hogan back from winning the Republican nomination: his weakness on abortion.
While in office, Hogan hasn’t exactly fought for the pro-life cause. The pro-life group Americans United for Life ranked Maryland as just the 38th most pro-life state under Hogan. In 2017, the Republican governor chose not to veto a bill that promised a state-level reimbursement of Planned Parenthood if it was defunded by Congress. Hogan did not sign the bill, but in Maryland, a bill becomes law if the governor doesn’t object within six days, which Hogan failed to do. So, in his strategic “govern down the middle” fashion, Hogan allowed a bill protecting funding for the country’s largest abortion provider to become law, albeit without directly endorsing it with his signature.
[Read more: The challenge for any 2020 primary challenge to Trump]
When Democratic candidate Anthony Brown attempted to portray Hogan as pro-life during their 2014 gubernatorial race, Hogan fought back. Hogan’s strategy proved successful, as he won the 2014 race, then won re-election in 2018 by a wide margin of 12 percentage points — and is currently the second-most popular governor in the nation.
But at the national level, 59 percent of Republicans believe that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. Considering this, it’s hard to imagine how Hogan could defeat Trump in the GOP primary.
His character flaws aside, Trump has stood by the pro-life movement arguably more than any president in recent history. Last year, he became the first president to address the annual March for Life, and he’s done more than just talk. In 2017, Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which bans American funding for abortions overseas. He’s also teamed up with a Republican majority in the Senate to appoint pro-life judges to important courts across the federal judiciary.
Meanwhile, Hogan holds the typically centrist view of being personally opposed to abortion but considering the pro-choice position settled law. For moderate Republicans like Hogan, abortion seems to be too touchy of an issue to take a hard stance on, so they often default to this intellectual cop-out. Fellow potential primary challenger and former Gov. John Kasich of Ohio recently vetoed a “heartbeat bill” that would have banned abortion procedures in Ohio once a baby’s heartbeat is detectable, which is around 6-7 weeks into a pregnancy.
The moderate approach that Kasich and Hogan pride themselves on can help the GOP on a whole host of issues, but on a moral matter like abortion that ends an innocent human life, there should be little to no room for flexibility.
With radical Democrats achieving recent success in New York with the so-called Reproductive Health Act that legalized abortion procedures up until birth in some circumstances, the pro-life Republican base is more fired up than ever before. With this in mind, the thought of a pro-choice Republican like Hogan winning the GOP nomination in 2020 is simply laughable.
But what if Hogan suddenly turned his personal opposition to abortion into complete public support for the pro-life cause? A politician with his popularity could revolutionize the way the abortion debate is perceived in the U.S. Sure, he would lose a chunk of his left-leaning supporters, but there’s also reason to believe some of his centrist admirers may be willing to consider the pro-life cause if it had a more moderate face than the often-controversial Trump.
Unless Hogan can win over at least a solid portion of the pro-life base of the Republican Party, he has no chance at defeating Trump in 2020. Without a moderate, likable figure such as Hogan behind the pro-life cause, abortion will continue to be viewed as mainstream by many Americans. If Trump’s struggles as president continue and a pro-life Hogan emerges, an upset could emerge at the Republican National Convention in 2020. But that can’t happen until Hogan gets on the right side of history.
Patrick Hauf (@PatrickHauf) is a writer for Young Voices and Lone Conservative.
