Governor Hogan spoke to The New Hampshire Institute of Politics’ “Politics and Eggs” event in Manchester about how to get America back on track with leadership that brings people together to achieve common sense solutions.
Governor Hogan said in his remarks that “America is at a critical turning point…the divisiveness and dysfunction that we see every single day in Washington only makes our country weaker. Our nation’s true strength comes from the exhausted majority of Americans who are united in defense of the values that make our nation great.”
Watch Governor Hogan’s address here.
Full text below:
Good morning, thank you.
Jim, thank you for that kind introduction, and thanks to you Neil for your warm welcome.
I want to sincerely thank the New England Council, the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, as well as President Favazza, and St. Anselm for giving me this opportunity.
And thank you all for being here this morning.
You know the first thing I want to say is — I’ve signed a lot of things: footballs, baseballs, hats, and shirts. And I’ve got to tell you: those wooden eggs are one of the hardest things to sign.
My handwriting is already bad enough on flat paper without that added challenge. But it’s a wonderful tradition never-the-less.
This is my second time speaking here at Politics & Eggs, and it’s the third time in just a few months that I’ve spent time in New Hampshire.
Not just because it’s such a beautiful state this time of year, but obviously New Hampshire plays a unique and important role in shaping our nation’s future.
And New Hampshire should continue that role as the first primary in the nation.
Granite Staters, regardless of their party affiliation, have a long tradition of taking that responsibility seriously and greeting every candidate or out-of-town elected official with common decency and an open, independent mind.
That tradition is exemplified by this terrific event and those iconic wooden eggs I just signed.
A tradition that also achieves even getting college students out of bed for an event before eight in the morning.
I’ll admit that I did not often achieve that feat when I was a college student at Florida State University.
The spirit of civic engagement found here in New Hampshire represents the very best of our democracy and we need more of it in our politics today, not less.
So when I received the invitation to speak to Politics & Eggs about the future of our country just a few weeks before another critically important election I did not hesitate at the opportunity.
I was here in Manchester in August to headline an event for the New Hampshire House Republican caucus because as a governor, I understand and believe that America’s comeback will start with common sense conservative leadership in the states.
In July, we were here to release our five-point plan to provide Americans relief from crushing inflation.
It was based on what we have already accomplished in my state of Maryland.
I traveled across New Hampshire to hear first-hand the concerns of hard-working granite staters on the front lines of the inflation crisis.
I toured Novel Iron Works, a second-generation family-owned steel fabricator in Greenland, drank beer with home builders in Portsmouth, met with commercial realtors in Bedford, and had lunch with contractors in Manchester.
I heard stories from families who are being crushed by the rising cost of living, a worsening housing crisis, and worries about being able to afford the cost of heating fuel this winter.
And I heard from so many granite staters who have never been more concerned about the direction of our country.
In 2014 I was hearing many very similar concerns in my home state of Maryland.
Back then, Maryland looked a lot like Washington does today. An arrogant and out-of-touch one-party monopoly.
They were calling Maryland the California of the east, and they did not mean that as a compliment.
Maryland had raised taxes 43 times in a row. We’d lost 8,000 businesses and 100,000 jobs, and a gallup poll showed that nearly half of all Marylanders wanted to leave the state.
I was a small businessman who had never held elective office. But I was fed up enough to step up and try to do something about it.
The media, the establishment, and the career politicians in Annapolis were all against me.
Not a soul believed that it was remotely possible for a Republican to win in the bluest state in America.
We were an underfunded and underdog campaign.
But we ran a New Hampshire-style grassroots effort that focused on the issues that most people cared about.
We went everywhere, met every voter we could find, and outworked everyone.
I promised to get the government off our backs and out of our pockets so we could grow our small businesses, put people back to work, and turn our economy around.
We built a big tent coalition of Republicans, Independents, and Reagan Democrats, and we were able to pull off the biggest surprise upset in America.
And then we did something that rarely ever happens in politics.
We actually did exactly what we said we would do.
We changed the entire mission of state government to be unabashedly pro-jobs and pro-business.
We eliminated or rewrote thousands of job-killing regulations.
I’m the only governor in America who got an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature to cut taxes — and we did it 8 years in a row — by $4.7 billion dollars.
We turned a $5.1 billion dollar deficit into the largest surplus in state history — $5.5 billion in reserves, a more than $10 billion difference.
We took our state’s overall economic performance from 49th out of 50 states to number six, which was the biggest economic turnaround in America.
When politicians pandered to the far-left, dangerous lunacy of “defund the police,” I was the first elected leader in America to speak out loudly against it.
The reality is, our police are underfunded and under attack.
To reverse the rising tide of violent crime, we need to stop demonizing and sabotaging the dedicated men and women who risk their lives every single day to keep the rest of us safe.
Which is why I enacted a re-fund the police initiative that invested a half-billion dollars more into state and local police.
Now others all across america are following our lead.
In 2015, I had only been governor for 89 days when the worst violence in 47 years erupted in our largest city of Baltimore.
The Mayor said she wanted to give the rioters “room to destroy.”
I immediately declared a State of Emergency and sent 1,000 additional police officers and 4,000 members of the National Guard into the city.
We followed the Reagan Doctrine of peace through strength. We allowed for peaceful protests but we immediately stopped the violence.
And I walked the streets of Baltimore, meeting with community leaders, faith leaders and the NAACP.
We worked to lower the temperature and to listen to the concerns.
The people of Baltimore thanked me for restoring peace and law and order to their community.
They knew that we had their backs and that I would never put politics before public safety.
In the summer of 2020 when cities all across America were facing unrest Baltimore was relatively peaceful.
And city residents worked with us to keep Baltimore safe.
We did not accomplish any of this by resorting to the phony partisan posturing that is so typical in this age of performative politics.
In my first inaugural address in 2015 I pledged that: ‘the politics that have divided our nation need not divide our state’ — and they haven’t.
We have achieved common sense bipartisan solutions that work for all the people of our state.
While most Americans believe the nation is way off track, the overwhelming majority of Marylanders believe that our state is headed in the right direction.
In 2018, while republicans were getting wiped out all across the country — in our deep blue state, in a big blue year I became only the second Republican Governor to be re-elected in the entire 242 year history of our state.
We have completely debunked the false narrative that the way you vote is pre-determined by the color of your skin, where you live, where you were born, or where you worship.
We succeeded by growing the tent and by convincing voters we had the right ideas and the competence to get things done.
Over the past eight years just down the road from our nation’s capital, we have already shown a better path forward.
And if we can do that in Maryland, then there is no place in America where those very same principles will not succeed.
America is at a critical turning point.
In Washington, the Democratic party is dragging us in a far-left direction that America does not want and can not afford.
Joe Biden said he would govern from the center, but instead, he caters to the far-left extremes of his party, and flails from crisis to crisis, showing weakness to the world.
Biden promised to work toward uniting our country, but instead he attacks millions of Americans who voted against him as a threat to democracy.
While America is beset by out-of-control inflation, an energy crisis is hurting struggling families and small businesses, and violent crime is devastating our cities and communities.
The Biden administration jams through a reckless grab bag of progressive wish list items: massive spending and tax hikes, and handouts to special interests.
Instead of developing our nation’s abundant energy supply and increasing domestic production the Biden Administration goes hat in hand begging a dictator in Venezuela for oil.
Around the world America’s enemies are emboldened and on the march.
Russia invades a peaceful neighbor and threatens the United States, and our NATO allies for supporting the freedom of the brave people of Ukraine.
China steals our nation’s intellectual property and makes common cause with our enemies across the world.
North Korea and Iran threaten the peace, stability, and security of the world as emerging nuclear powers, reckless aggressors, and enemies of freedom.
After the disastrous withdrawal from afghanistan our allies question whether they should still trust us, and our enemies question whether they should still fear us.
The majority of Americans today believe that our country is way off track and heading in the wrong direction.
Most Americans are thoroughly convinced that we are hopelessly divided, that our political system is fundamentally broken, and that Washington is completely dysfunctional.
The voices of the exhausted majority are ignored in deference to the demands of the loudest and angriest few who seem hell-bent on tearing America apart.
When so many Americans feel that neither party is delivering for them, the result is unrestrained toxic politics, rabid tribalism, and hatred of the other.
Neither side really seems to want to make progress.
They’d rather make demands and win arguments on Twitter.
Look, I’m willing to stand up and fight for the things that really matter, but not for status-quo politics-as-usual, and not to perpetuate polarization and paralysis.
America needs workhorses, not more show ponies.
It’s time for less talk and more action.
I don’t come from the performative arts school of politics.
I come from the get-to-work and get-things done school of politics, and I’ll work with anyone who wants to do the people’s business.
I recently returned from a two-week trade mission to Japan and South Korea.
Everywhere I went I heard from our allies who still believe in America, but they worry that America is too divided to believe in itself.
They see politicians in both parties who no longer have confidence and faith in the American people, and those who doubt whether we can or should still lead the free world.
They see politicians who simply find scapegoats to blame for their own failures.
We won’t fix any of this by catering to the loudest and angriest voices.
We do it by standing against the extremes and for the majority of Americans.
We do it with a hopeful, positive vision for America.
The divisiveness and dysfunction that we see every single day in Washington only makes our country weaker.
Our nation’s true strength comes from the exhausted majority of Americans who are united in defense of the values that make our nation great.
Most Americans understand that there is nothing compassionate about a breakdown of law and order. Strength is compassionate when it’s in the service of protecting others.
Most Americans believe that we should finally demand real fiscal responsibility from Washington. They want to stop raising taxes, reduce job-killing red tape and to restore American energy independence.
Most Americans want parents to have more choice in their child’s education and they think we should address the college debt crisis by making college more affordable and expanding access to opportunity, not by transferring debt to hard-working taxpayers.
Most Americans want us to stand for our allies and stand up to our enemies, not abandon our allies and appease our enemies.
Despite our imperfections and all of the serious challenges we face, America remains the greatest nation on Earth.
People from all across the world still yearn to come here — to become Americans.
The rest of the world still looks to us for leadership and inspiration.
Just ask yourself: Even on our darkest days, where on Earth would you rather live than the United States of America?
Americans are not tired of freedom and democracy.
They’re tired of failed leadership, and they’re fed up with politicians who put their own self-interest before America.
Those of us blessed by your trust should give you a government that doesn’t act as if it’s something apart from you.
But one that is of the people, by the people, and for the people.
A government that appreciates that no one of us has all the answers or all the power.
A government that tolerates contrary views among a diverse citizenry without making them into enemies or doubting their patriotism.
A government that can discuss and debate with as much civility as passion and with a view to persuade, not to intimidate. To encourage, not to demonize or defeat.
A government that can take on the big problems and make things better for all our citizens.
A government that all of America can be proud of.
Ladies and gentlemen, the best days of America are still ahead of us.
We can change our nation for the better so that America can once again be that shining city on a hill.
There is a better path forward — if only we have the courage to seize it.
Thank you — God Bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.