Larry Hogan’s Authoritarian Covid Response Proves He’s Not The ‘Small Government’ Republican He Pretends To Be

Former governor of Maryland Larry Hogan is rumoredly considering a 2024 presidential run and spent his Sunday watching NBC’s “Meet the Press” As if he were more of a “small government” Florida Governor is now Republican Ron DeSantis recently took action in order to protect children from radical gender ideologies in government schools.

“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,'” Chuck Todd was told by Hogan.

WATCH: Potential GOP WH candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his team have made education a top priority and are stomping on schools that teach racial or gender identity.@LarryHogan: “I’m a small-government, common-sense conservative and, to me, it sounds like big government” pic.twitter.com/Y1Uog9WAmA

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) February 19, 2023

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.

As a result, some of the most vulnerable Americans have been paying the price. Under Hogan’s encouragement, Maryland schools quickly became some of the longest-closed educational institutions in the U.S. The dangers of school closures were present from the beginning of lockdowns. Yet when some national leaders including then-President Donald Trump called on schools to reopen, Hogan claimed that was “bullying.”

“Well, we’re not going to take any bullying, and the state is going to make the best decisions that we can based on the science and what the educators and the public health officials say,” Hogan said. “We’ve got to get our kids