REASON: Josh Hawley's Toxic Populism

Reason ^ | March 8 | PETER SUDERMAN

[RandFan]

Is the senator's authoritarian grandstanding the dark future of the GOP?

When rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in January, Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) was there. Not only was he happy to see the mob assembled outside his workplace; he cheered them on.

Shortly before the group of conspiracists and reactionaries broke into the building—vandalizing offices, taking selfies amid the wreckage, and dramatically halting business on both the House and Senate floors as lawmakers were evacuated to secure locations, sometimes fearing for their lives—Hawley had been photographed giving them a raised fist of encouragement.

Earlier that morning, then–President Donald Trump had addressed a rally at the National Mall. "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women," he directed. "And we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong."

Trump pumped the mob up, but it was Hawley who gave it an official channel and a sense of legitimacy. The week before, Hawley had been the first senator to announce that he would oppose certification of the electoral votes that would give the presidency to Joe Biden. "I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of megacorporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden," he said at the end of December. Congress, he complained, had "failed to act."

The announcement was entirely typical of Hawley: blustery, partisan, pro-Trump, anti–Big Tech, and transparently authoritarian. And it led to disastrous consequences.

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[FenwickBabbitt]

Hawley seems to have the right sort of enemies attacking him, so he must be doing a lot right…

Of course, here the Trump-hating author calls Hawley an “authoritarian” as the Dems openly embrace authoritarianism as they push through their HR1 pro-voter fraud bill eliminating free and fair elections from the entire country, try to add two new states just to take over the Senate more securely, offer to hand over citizenship and voting rights to anyone in the world who wants to come here so Dems’ can get more votes, threaten to turn the Supreme Court into an arm of the Dem majority in Congress, attempt to ditch the filibuster so they can rule uncontested, slander 2 Senators and 1 Congresswoman in hopes of reversing the democratic process and kicking them out of the offices the people put them in…

I wouldn’t call the article controversial; I’d call it slanderous trash.

[chickenlips]

Thank you, I hadn’t read anything anti-America First funded by the Koch Brothers all day. Since I quit caffeine, I usually read globalist libertarian stories like this first thing in the morning to loosen my bowels.

[Robert DeLong]

I figured it must have, by the update it carried at the end. But even that revelation changed nothing in his thought process. These people apparently have never witnessed a real armed insurrection before, even if it was presented on tape rerun. They just needed a mole hill to justify their stupidity, so they could beat their chests and proclaim they were correct all along.

[crusher]

“The author is married to a screedwriter for the Washington Compost and The Atlantic, for ten years thus far.”

Yeah, Megan McArdle. Once apon a time she occasionally had interesting things to say, but since becoming a BezosBot she is now just bat$h!t crazy. She might grow out of it. Long ago and far away I was pretty libertarian myself, but I grew out of it. Now I’m a minarchist.

[Augie]

Agree that Greitens will have a tough row to hoe in a statewide election. He has personal social issues baggage that will be hard for some to ignore.

Ashcroft and Schmitt either one would do nicely. I don’t know much about Wagner.

Truth be told, most anyone with a pulse will be better than roy blunt.

[Does so]

The original version of this overly-long screed had the fake story of Brian Sicknick’s death in it.

Is that the "slain" officer found at Google today?

[firebrand]

The Times had a long over-the-top hatchet job on Hawley yesterday. Apparently he is lazy but ambitious, with dangerous signs of dominionism.

It never dealt with his courageous act of being the first to say Pence should reject electoral votes from the states where fraud is suspected, and his CPAC speech that showed he knows his history and made sure Americans knew that the rejection of electoral votes had been done by Democrats many times in the past when Republicans had been elected. We had a road to a peaceful solution but somehow Trump haters can only see things one way.

OK. It’s time for all the wannabes to tear him down right about now. They are so transparent. Still in junior high, trying to rip him down with unfounded jabs. Everything Trump must of course be annihilated, no matter how brilliant and promising the speaker.