The Knives Come Out for Josh Hawley

[Nevilledog]

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Tweet text:Rick Wilson
@TheRickWilson
How Josh Hawley became the most hated man in Washington—even among the conservatives who once saw him as a future president. @emmaogreen reports:

The Knives Come Out for Josh Hawley
The elite conservative world saw the Missouri senator as America’s next great statesman. Instead, he’s revealed uncomfortable truths about the movement.
theatlantic.com
12:55 PM · Feb 5, 2021

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/02/josh-hawley-future-capitol-president/617873/

Since Josh Hawley was a young man, powerful people have told him he was special. His teachers gave him the “Special R” award, just one feather in the Rockhurst High School valedictorian’s cap of outstandingness. Hawley’s mentor at Stanford, David Kennedy, took a shine to him just weeks into his freshman year, and came to see him as possibly the most gifted student he ever taught. At Yale Law, the dean, Harold Koh, took care to seat the young banker’s son from Missouri beside the state’s former senator John Danforth when Danforth visited. Hawley was working on a book about Theodore Roosevelt; he was fascinated by Alexis de Tocqueville’s idea that American democracy depends on regular people in local communities. It wouldn’t have been polite for Hawley to admit to ambitions such as becoming senator or president. But the glimmer of potential lingered in the air. Here, Danforth thought, is somebody who is really special.

Hawley impressed Chief Justice John Roberts, who favored polished clerks over rabid ideologues. Hawley skipped the kingmaker’s queue in Missouri politics, helped along in his 2016 race for attorney general by conservative power players he knew from his days as a D.C. religious-liberty litigator. He launched a campaign for a U.S. Senate seat nine months after winning the AG job, urged on by Danforth and a coterie of big donors the elder senator had recruited. To all of these people, Hawley represented an opportunity: to promote homegrown talent of the conservative legal movement, to elevate a statesman in the era of Trump, even to shape what conservatism should mean.

Hawley’s combination of conservative politics, news-anchor gravitas, apparent ambition, and Ivy League success made him a target of liberal hatred from the moment he arrived in the Senate. But lately, all that Hawley specialness has attracted a special kind of rage from his former allies in the conservative world, too. On January 6, a violent mob stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of Electoral College votes. Five people died, including a Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick. When news outlets around the world wrote the story of the riot, many illustrated it with a photo of Hawley, raising his fist to a crowd of then-peaceful protesters.

The Missouri senator became the avatar of the congressional insurrection, the one lawmakers started before the mob showed up. Conservatives and liberals alike blamed Hawley for encouraging the Capitol attackers by questioning the legitimacy of the election. Sure, seven other senators, including Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville and Kansas’s Roger Marshall, also challenged the results, as did 139 members of the House of Representatives. But Tuberville was schooled by Nick Saban, not John Roberts—the former Auburn coach wasn’t marked for political greatness. It didn’t even matter much that Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who has a similarly elite résumé, stuck it out with Hawley and disputed Arizona’s Electoral College results. “Ted is now just that annoying fly in the room—okay, we’ll swat it eventually,” a Republican campaign operative told me. “Josh is seen as so much worse.”

*snip*

[sheshe2]

1. Josh.

Josh
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Ooopsie!

[lindysalsagal]

6. Lol.

[Irish_Dem]

2. All sizzle, no steak.

He fell apart when he hit the big time.
He had good intelligence, credentials and an ability to dazzle his superiors.
But there is no substance to him, and his judgement is terrible.
No desire to be a real leader, just another fund raising con man.

[hlthe2b]

3. Warning. Though Hawley's sins are well laid out, the writer seems enamored with him and it shows.

She bends over to give him benefit-of-the-doubt and to conclude all may eventually come out to his advantage. (paraphrased).

[crickets]

9. +1

If you squint, it’s even possible to see a principled stand in what he was doing.

Never mind the judges who slapped down the very arguments he's making. Trump 2.0 indeed.

[Cha]

4. Rt TY

[Fiendish Thingy]

5. Naw, I still think Ted Cruz is hated more, at least by his own party. Nt

[Xolodno]

7. Heh...

[link:

|]

[Vivienne235729]

8. Good. I hope this is stake in his political coffin. He is evil and dangerous

and needs to be thrown out with the rest of the trash in the GOP.

[Hekate]

10. This line burns

“Ted is now just that annoying fly in the room—okay, we’ll swat it eventually,” a Republican campaign operative told me. “Josh is seen as so much worse.”