As the odds increase that Donald Trump will be kicked out of office before the end of his first term, his potential Republican challengers are hopefully sniffing the air. Already, several are lying in wait, poised to strike should Robert Mueller’s report prove irreparably damaging, and Friday brought yet another name to the forefront: according to Politico, Republican governor Larry Hogan of Maryland is being courted by prominent Never Trumpers to consider a 2020 run. What’s more, he seems to be taking their entreaties seriously, planning a trip to Iowa next month as the vice chair of the bipartisan National Governors Association. The biggest hint of his intentions, however, came during his inauguration speech on Wednesday, when he happened to mention that his late father, a former congressman, was the first Republican to call for Richard Nixon’s impeachment. “Despite tremendous political pressure, he put aside partisanship and answered the demands of his conscience to do what he thought was the right thing for the nation that he loved,” Hogan said.

The statement reportedly alarmed the Trump camp, which is already poised to crush Hogan, along with anyone else who gets in the president’s way. “Any potential challenger should understand that the Trump campaign is better organized than any campaign in history, especially with the support of the Republican Party, which is firmly behind the president,” Trump 2020 political director Chris Carr told Politico, in a bit of saber rattling. The president’s campaign has indeed moved to consolidate its power. In addition to amassing a staggering $100 million war chest, in recent weeks it merged its campaigning and fund-raising arms with the Republican National Committee—an unprecedented move for the latter, which usually stays out of the primary process. Carr himself is interviewing the R.N.C.’s battleground-state directors, and Trump allies are systematically ensuring that G.O.P. delegates at the 2020 convention are Trump loyalists, and not Never Trumpers hoping to make a statement.

Of course, there’s no way for the president’s campaign to insulate itself from a potential Mueller bombshell. And if the special counsel does inadvertently eviscerate Trump’s incipient re-election bid, Hogan may be well positioned to step in. He handily won re-election in liberal-leaning Maryland, at which point his name began to circulate among hopeful members of the G.O.P. establishment. “He went out of his way to be a little more forward-leaning than he needed to be . . . he knows what he’s doing,” Bill Kristol told Politico of Hogan’s inaugural speech. “He wanted people to see that he had some interest in the national scene.”

Recent polling suggests the Republican base could be receptive: a Des Moines Register survey taken prior to the shutdown suggested that while the state’s registered Republicans would vote for Trump “if there was no better candidate,” as one respondent put it, 63 percent said they would consider a potential primary challenger. Big-name anti-Trump candidates polled poorly against him—only 31 percent of Iowans viewed John Kasich favorably, for instance—suggesting that voters could instead gravitate toward a fresher candidate devoid of 2016 baggage. In the modern era, however, sitting presidents who face primary challengers often go on to lose the general election—an outcome that would be disastrous for the Republican Party. Barring a Mueller intervention, Hogan may see his challenge turn into a kamikaze mission at best.

This story has been updated.

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