Hawley an emblem of a weak and rotten party

[struggle4progress]

10:50 AM ET
Peter Wehner

... Hawley .. clearly knows better ... He graduated from Stanford University in 2002 and Yale Law School in 2006. He has clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts; he taught at one of London’s elite private schools, St. Paul’s; and he served as an appellate litigator at one of the world’s biggest law firms ...

... Hawley, along with many of his Senate and House colleagues, and important Republican players, including the former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, are all trying to position themselves as the heirs of Trump ...

... they are cowards, and that they are weak. They are far more ambitious than they are principled, and they are willing to damage American politics and society rather than be criticized by their own tribe. I’m guessing that many of them haven’t read Nietzsche, but they have embraced his philosophy of perspectivism, which in its crudest form posits that there is no objective truth, no authoritative or independent criteria for determining what is true or false ... Everything is conditioned on .. your perspective ...

... a significant portion of the Republican Party lives in a fantasy world, a place where facts and truth don’t hold sway, where “owning the libs” is an end in itself, and where seceding from reality is a symbol of tribal loyalty, rather than a sign of mental illness. This is leading the party, and America itself, to places we’ve never been before ...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/cowards-are-destroying-the-gop/617534/

[Irish_Dem]

1. "For those to whom much is given, much is required." JFK

This is a foreign concept to the GOP.
Shame shame shame on them.

[Cha]

2. & a FUBARED BRAINWASHED CULT.

[struggle4progress]

3. Hawley's heedless ambition

Michael Gerson
Dec. 31, 2020 at 3:38 p.m. EST

... In the cause of his own advancement, the senator from Missouri is willing to endorse the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans — particularly voters of color — and justify the attempted theft of an election. He is willing to credit malicious lies that will poison our democracy for generations. The fulfillment of Hawley’s intention — the ultimate overturning of the election — would be the collapse of U.S. self-government. The attempt should be a source of shame ...

... the greatest practitioner and innovator of political cancel culture has been .. Trump ...

... A contest of policy visions can result in compromise. The attempt to delegitimize your opponent requires their political annihilation. And a fight to the political death is always conducted in the shadow of possible violence ...

Trump ... intuitively grasps — like many authoritarians before him — that the biggest lies motivate the most abject servility ... His message ... is amplified by right-wing media personalities and grifters .. who find profit and influence in the humiliation of their country. It is truly the technological golden age for casual sedition ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/josh-hawleys-heedless-ambition-is-a-threat-to-the-republic/2020/12/31/1d3f8260-4b9c-11eb-a9f4-0e668b9772ba_story.html

[struggle4progress]

4. Fundraising off Electoral College challenge

BY TAL AXELROD - 12/31/20 02:17 PM EST

Outgoing GOP Rep. Denver Riggleman (Va.) tore into Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) after Hawley sent out a fundraising email boosting his upcoming challenge to the Electoral College results.

“Of course he’s fundraising off fantasy,” Riggleman tweeted. “Getting ready for 2024. Using disinformation and conspiracies as a baseline for fundraising. Grift. Fooling people to take their money. #QAnon and conspiracy theories are the new ‘normal’. Shameful stuff” ...

Riggleman in particular has been a vocal critic of the president since the election. The Virginia Republican lost the GOP nomination in his race in part due to backlash over his officiating of a same-sex marriage.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/532242-outgoing-gop-congressman-criticizes-hawley-for-fundraising-of-electoral

[OAITW r.2.0]

5. Your time in the pickle barrel, Josh.

Lets see who you really are.

[struggle4progress]

6. The GOP is the sedition party

Jennifer Rubin
Dec. 31, 2020 at 7:45 a.m. EST

... Like the 126 Republican House members who signed on to a lawsuit to throw out votes of states that voted for President-elect Joe Biden, Hawley has joined the authoritarian right-wingers who openly seek to overthrow the results of an election he does not like. He is a reminder to voters in Georgia of why allowing Hawley’s party to retain its Senate majority puts our democracy (not to mention our financial security and health) at risk ...

... Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) accurately explained that Hawley is “engaged in the attempted overthrow of democracy.” Whatever you call it — sedition, a coup, an anti-democratic putsch — Hawley’s move violates his oath of office ...

... Republicans could have stood up to a lawless president. There has been ample evidence of Trump’s unconstitutional conduct and mental unfitness to serve. Even if they vote down Hawley’s objection, they are responsible for turning their party into an authoritarian movement and making America look like a banana republic ...

... He knows that what he is doing is antithetical to the Constitution, his oath of office and his obligations as a lawyer. Yale should ask for its diploma back; the Missouri bar should move to take away his license. Georgia voters should send Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the U.S. Senate to deprive Hawley of the gavel on any committee and his party of the majority ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/31/seditious-party-still-attacking-democracy/

[struggle4progress]

7. Future of Trumpism is not Hawley

Matt Ford
December 31, 2020

... Hawley .. has been running for president ever since he arrived in Washington ... For ambitious conservatives like Hawley who aspire to even higher office, undermining the legitimacy of this election is just another step on the path to winning the next ...

... all .. available evidence suggests .. cynical self-interest is the real motive ... Ben Sasse, a Republican and an occasional critic of Trump, confirmed those suspicions .. Wednesday ... “When we talk in private, I haven’t heard a single Congressional Republican allege that the election results were fraudulent — not one,” he wrote. “Instead, I hear them talk .. about how they will ‘look’ to .. Trump’s most ardent supporters” ...

The Trump era is .. a long chain of Faustian bargains between various prominent conservatives and the soon-to-be-former president. They embraced an incompetent authoritarian in exchange for Supreme Court seats, a Senate majority, tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, and raw political influence. Now Josh Hawley is cutting a deal with the devil ...

https://newrepublic.com/article/160772/josh-hawley-future-trumpism-2024-election

[Blue_true]

8. Hawley is playing a long game.

He realized that being a total Trump suck-ass now endears him to 74 million voters. All he has to do is convince a fraction of the 7 million more that voted for Biden that he is halfway sane. His support of $2,000 checks for some Americans, to me, is a big tell.

[struggle4progress]

9. The height of absurdity

Posted By Ian Schwartz
On Date December 30, 2020

~snip~

CONWAY: Well, if that's true, then I guess the path to success in the Republican Party is to continue to degrade it.

And we're -- what we're seeing here is a never-ending downward spiral into delusion and unreality and into just lies about the integrity of our democracy. And that is profoundly dangerous. These individuals are seeking to advance their own political careers and do so at the expense of trust in our democracy.

They're fomenting these lies, fomenting these fears of an illegitimate election, and they're doing so for their own political benefit. And it's destructive of democracy. It's horrible. And nobody's ever done this before.

~snip~

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/12/30/george_conway_on_sen_hawley_this_is_just_the_height_of_absurdity_this_election_is_over.html

[struggle4progress]

10. Put Republicans to uncomfortable test

Ruth Marcus
Deputy editorial page editor
Dec. 30, 2020 at 5:30 p.m. EST

... His plan to challenge the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory when Congress convenes for that purpose on Jan. 6 has no basis in the facts or the law. That is putting it too charitably, actually. It is, if anything, anti-constitutional — inconsistent with the Constitution’s vision of the ceremonial role of Congress in ratifying the election results.

It is doomed to fail — except, perhaps, at its scarcely disguised purpose of winning Hawley favor in the eyes of the Trumpian base. Think of it as the first act of Hawley’s all-but-inevitable 2024 presidential campaign. Think of it as what it is: a stunt.

Yet while irresponsible, Hawley’s move is not necessarily a terrible development. It forces a vote that will have the salutary effect of requiring his Republican colleagues to decide — and to put on the record —whether their loyalty is to President Trump or to the Constitution. Better to know than to guess. Better to inflict some accountability rather than to enable dodging.

Put another way: Any vote that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) fervently wishes to avoid is one I’m for. Put every member of the House and Senate on the record, and let them reap the consequences, for good and for ill, in the short term of political fallout and in the long view of history. Those who vote against certifying Biden’s victory can explain it to their grandchildren ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/30/let-josh-hawley-put-republicans-uncomfortable-test/

[struggle4progress]

11. 2024 Presidential credentials

MILI GODIO ON 12/30/20 AT 4:57 PM EST

... Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican, said Wednesday that Hawley's move will appeal to voters even if doesn't yield results.

"Internal monologue: 'I want to be President so I decided to try to get POTUS tweet saying I'm great even though I know this isn't going anywhere, but hey... I'll blame someone else when it fails,' Kinzinger tweeted in response to Hawley's statement.

https://www.newsweek.com/josh-hawley-burnishes-2024-presidential-credentials-stimulus-election-fights-1558096

[The Wizard]

12. The party of Putin

and the violent lunatic fringe.

[global1]

13. Hawley Is Trying To Out-Trump Trump.....

if we don't hold Trump and his criminal syndicate responsible for their crimes of the last four years - the next Trump wannabe will be worse than Trump and maybe will end our democracy. We have to put a stop to this now as we have a chance to stop it.

We can't say we won't look back and just move forward and not hold Trump and Company accountable.

Trump has exploited every law and loophole he could and we still have 20 days left for more of his damage to be done.

Need to stop this now OR

The next Trump-like Repug will be worse.

[hibbing]

14. Rotten yes, weak no n/t