Is Josh Hawley morphing into Ted Cruz II? | Opinion

I know my place. I have no right to tell you what to think about Josh Hawley. Sure, I grew up in St. Louis and I come back a lot. But, well — life happens. You get a generous scholarship from a good school in Texas, and the next thing you know you’ve got your dream job and kids who wear Dallas Mavericks gear.

So if you like Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, fine. But maybe I can draw on my experiences here in Texas to offer a few things you might want to think about. I’ve been watching our Sen. Ted Cruz for at least as long as you’ve been watching Josh Hawley.

When you compare Hawley and Cruz, remember: There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be president. With the possible exception of George Washington, every president wanted to be president. These days, that means guys like Hawley and Cruz are needy, attention-seeking camera hogs. Deal with it. If Abraham Lincoln were around today, he’d be posting on X and angling for a Sunday show guest slot. It’s tacky, sure — but tacky works now.

What doesn’t work? Party loyalty. We’re a long way from the smoke-filled rooms where party elders picked the nominee. Maybe you miss those days — it did give us Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower — but they’re not coming back. Today, there’s no reason an aspiring president shouldn’t proudly alienate their own party.

Cruz and Hawley know this. By most accounts, their fellow Republicans don’t like them (OK, hate might be more accurate, but let’s not be mean). Former House Speaker John Boehner once called Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh.” When Hawley supported Donald Trump’s obvious lies about the 2020 election, GOP Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska said: “Senator Hawley was doing something that was really dumbass. … You don’t lie to the American people.”

Is that a disqualifier? Maybe not. Truman reportedly said, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” Being unpopular in the Senate doesn’t necessarily make Cruz or Hawley bad senators — or bad presidential candidates.

But how they alienate their colleagues does matter. And here, I think, is where there’s a difference.

Picking fights with fellow Republicans

Way back in 2013, Cruz decided to out-Republican the Republicans. He embraced the whole Tea Party, less government-low spending agenda. So did most of the GOP. Cruz just pushed harder and yelled louder. He even threatened to shut down the government to get his way.

It didn’t work. Government debt has more than doubled since 2013, and Ted Cruz is not president.

If you’ve watched Cruz at all, you won’t be surprised that he still thinks he can be. He also thinks his beard looks good. In reality, he’s lucky he ran for reelection against weak opponents in what remains a MAGA state. He’s unlikely to be president, and he’s fighting his own reputation just to be an effective senator.

Even Cruz’s defenders would admit his influence has faded. He’s just another loud politician who’s proved less effective than the other senator from Texas, John Cornyn — who, while every bit as conservative, actually builds coalitions and gets things done.

Even if you’re a big Hawley supporter, you don’t want him to become Ted Cruz with a better barber. And maybe he won’t. Maybe Hawley has figured something out.

Like Cruz, Hawley loves picking fights with Republicans. But unlike Cruz, he doesn’t just want to fight over tactics — he wants to fight over policy.

Of course, all of this is happening in the large, lumpy shadow of Trump. And since Trump values obsequious loyalty above all else, most Republicans are too cowed to fight over much of anything. Hawley will almost certainly support the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (you know, the one that raises the deficit by $3.1 trillion).

But in that very fight, Hawley’s staked out a pretty un-Republican position. He wants to be seen as a populist defender of the working class and the poor.

I hope you saw the essay Hawley wrote in the New York Times a few weeks ago. (I’m sure any Missouri paper would have published it — but that he chose a national outlet tells you something about Hawley. Probably something you already knew.)

Never mind the facts — politically, it was genius. Hawley sees what’s coming: Post-Biden Democrats look like a disaster, with no clear path to reclaiming what we once called their New Deal base. At the same time, Trump’s GOP has abandoned any pretense of being the party of strong defense or limited government. Hawley’s trying to carve out a completely new lane on the policy spectrum.

Like it or not, that’s an awesome maneuver. Like him or not, Hawley is wicked smart.

The real question is whether he’s believable. And there’s an easy two-part test for that. First, drive out to the General Motors factory in Wentzville at shift change and ask yourself how many Colorado pickup trucks those workers are going to be making when there’s a 50% tariff on steel and at least a 10% tariff on all the imported parts — about half the content — in those trucks.

Once you’ve figured that out, then just listen to Hawley. If he tells Trump to knock it off, he’s for real. If not, picture Hawley with sideburns and a mustache.