Josh Hawley is a young
politician. He just turned 41, the youngest Senator in Washington. His life has
been defined by privilege
and achievement. Son of a banker, he attended a private boys’ Catholic prep
school in Kansas City, Missouri. He graduated from Stanford University as a Phi
Beta Kappa, then from Yale Law School, where was an editor of the Yale Law
Journal. He clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Returning to
Missouri, he taught constitutional law at the University of Missouri Law
School, and was elected Attorney General of Missouri.
His politics have been
consistently Christian conservative. At Yale, he was president of the
Federalist Society chapter. After clerking, he worked for the Becket Fund for
Religious Liberty. He wrote briefs defending Hobby Lobby’s successful effort in
the Supreme Court to gain an exemption from paying for employees’ birth control
medications. Hawley was a faculty member of the Blackstone Legal Fellowship,
which is funded by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian
organization. He
has argued that the obedience “of our nation” must be to “the Lordship of
Christ”. Hawley would agree with former Attorney General William Barr that “free
government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people”, meaning a
conservative evangelistic Christian people. He joined many other Republican
attorneys general in 2018 trying to get the Supreme Court to declare the
Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. Only after that became an issue in his
run for the Senate that year, did he state that he supported protection for
people with pre-existing conditions.
Hawley was on a fast track to
power, but it wasn’t fast enough for him. Less than a year after being elected
Attorney General, during which he condemned “ladder-climbing politicians”, he
began his campaign for the Senate. In 2018, he beat the Democratic incumbent
Claire McCaskill. Almost immediately, he wanted more, putting himself forward
as a candidate for President in 2024. If Hawley does run in 2024, he would be
trying to be the second
youngest person ever to be elected president.
As Senator, Hawley voted in
favor of Trump’s preferences 86%
of the time. He recently voted against the National Defense Authorization Act
and against overriding Trump’s veto. Like the other more experienced
Republicans who are talking already about running for President in 2024, Ted
Cruz and Mike Pompeo, Hawley decided that he needed to do more to get the full
support of Trump’s most fervent supporters. That meant not just going along
with Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his defeat on November 3, but leading the
charge to overturn the election.
He was the first Senator to
announce his opposition to confirming Joe Biden’s electoral victory. On January
6, he demonstrated his approval of the growing crowds at the Capitol with waves,
thumbs up, and a raised fist that has become an iconic
image of irresponsible demogoguery. Two hours later, the Capitol was in
lockdown. So Hawley changed his tune, tweeting “Thank you to the brave law
enforcement officials who have put their lives on the line. The violence must
end, those who attacked police and broke the law must be prosecuted, and Congress
must get back to work and finish its job.” But he did not change his idea of
what that job was. In the middle of the Capitol chaos, his campaign sent out a fund-raising
text: “Hi, I’m Josh Hawley. I am leading the charge to fight for free and
fair elections.” Even after the rampaging insurrectionists had destroyed
offices and killed a policeman, he objected to certifying the votes in swing
states that Biden won.
Josh Hawley did not start the
lies about the 2020 election. Trump began that treasonous narrative in 2016 and
escalated his rhetoric long before November. Hawley and countless other
Republicans allowed those lies to circulate and build momentum among Republican
voters for years. After November 3, most Congressional Republican lawmakers
fanned those embers of revolt by refusing to recognize the Democratic victory,
and 106 members of Congress signed on to the big lie by supporting the 17
Republican attorneys general who sued in the Supreme Court to overturn
the election in swing states. Hawley’s raised fist joined the Republican
Attorneys General Association, whose robocalls the day
before the insurrection called on “patriots” to “stop the steal”. The list
of Republicans who directly incited the Capitol mob keeps growing, but not as
fast as the list of Republicans who now insist they share no blame.
Hawley’s magical political
ascent has now suffered from his unbounded ambition to secure the allegiance of
the Trump base. Simon and Schuster decided it won’t publish his book. His
mentor, former Missouri Senator and “dean of Missouri Republican politics” Jack
Danforth, says that supporting Hawley was “the
worst mistake I ever made in my life.” The PAC representing Hallmark Cards
demanded that Hawley return their donations. The Kansas City Star and the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch editorial boards called
for his resignation. The Hawley
2024 T-shirts probably won’t sell.
Hawley only approves of some
political protests. After a small group of people chanted on the sidewalk
outside his home in Virginia, holding candles and signs reading, “Protect
democracy”, Hawley went to on Twitter to denounce “Antifa scumbags” who “threatened
my wife and newborn daughter”. What Hawley called “leftwing
violence”, local police called “peaceful”. His comments about the Capitol
mob use none of that colorful language.
A child of the elite,
propelled to ever greater success at elite institutions, Hawley proclaimed
himself in 2019 the champion of “the
great American middle”. He criticized the “politics of elite ambition” (but
not his own), policies that “favored the wealthy and the well-educated” (but
not the Trump tax cuts), and the “leadership class” (but not himself). At the
end, he urged a “a better understanding of liberty”: “It’s the ability to have
a say, to have a stake, and together, to set the course of our own history.”
Hawley tried to put himself
at the front of the great American fringe, the most radical opponents of
allowing the majority to have a say, to set the course of America’s history. He
sold his soul to the insurrectionists, hoping they would propel him to the top.
It appears now that they will drag him to the bottom.
Steve Hochstadt
Springbrook WI
January 12, 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment