With Kavanaugh, Hawley puts loyalty to Trump first. That’s a problem
When it comes to the treatment of women, Missouri Republicans have been snake-bit in recent years.
In 2012, then-U.S. Rep. Todd Akin disclosed how he really felt about rape, and it wound up costing him and his party a U.S. Senate seat.
This year, of course, former Gov. Eric Greitens wound up walking away from the most powerful job in the state 16 months after he assumed it, following allegations of blackmail in connection with an extramarital affair.
This brings us to the ongoing drama surrounding Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Missouri GOP Senate nominee Josh Hawley’s unabashed support for President Donald Trump’s pick. You can’t help but wonder if the snake is about to bite again.
Hawley isn’t just supportive of Kavanaugh. He’s all in, all the time. The disclosure of a second woman accusing Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct is having no impact on Hawley’s position. He said Monday in Jefferson County that the latest allegations haven’t shaken his loyalty a bit.
On Friday night in Springfield, Hawley stood alongside Trump once again, extolling the president’s wisdom at selecting Kavanaugh and criticizing his opponent, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, for opposing him.
Of Kavanaugh, Hawley has said that he’s “a remarkably qualified nominee for the Supreme Court. I have full confidence he will uphold the Constitution as the people wrote it, not impose his values from the bench. And that’s what the people deserve.”
On McCaskill’s initial reticence to take a stand on Kavanaugh, and then later on her decision to oppose, Hawley has been relentless. No Republican Senate candidate in the nation has been as aggressive as Hawley in using Kavanaugh’s nomination as a weapon, The New York Times concluded.
The problem here is that Hawley is using absolutely no nuance in extolling the virtues of Kavanaugh — or of Trump, for that matter. He’s shown every indication that party loyalty comes first even before the need for an open mind or a deeper investigation. And this man is the attorney general of Missouri?
“Have you noticed something about our president?” Hawley asked the crowd Friday night in Springfield. “When he makes a promise, he keeps it. When he makes a commitment, he delivers.”
Hawley often also points out that Trump won Missouri big in 2016. Maybe that explains why he’s so determined to cozy up to him.
Hawley’s blind allegiance to the man who’s visited the state four times to champion his cause is troubling. Senators must display a certain independence as they go about their duties because, after all, each state only has two of them. Senators, at times, must question even the bosses of their own party if they feel those leaders have gone astray. That’s why the founders made Congress an independent branch of government.
Instead, Hawley has sold that duty down the river as his end of a Faustian bargain with Trump. Trump gets Hawley’s unqualified support on everything while Hawley piggybacks on Trump’s unmatched ability to fire up GOP partisans on his behalf. Exciting the base has proven to be a difficult challenge for Hawley to manage on his own.
So much for any oversight of the executive branch from Hawley should he win in November.