Josh Hawley picks a fight with GOP strategy with antiabortion stance | Opinion
Josh Hawley is getting crosswise with Donald Trump. Again.
A few months back, Trump savaged Missouri’s senior senator on social media because of Hawley’s bill to block elected officials from trading individual stocks. Trump — always on the lookout to personally profit from his power — took the whole thing personally.
Hawley, Trump wrote then, is a “second-tier Senator.”
Trump’s anger subsided after Hawley made clear the president would be exempt from the ban. But it was a fresh reminder of the only rule that seems to matter in today’s GOP: Never get on Trump’s bad side.
Hawley, it seems, has now decided he’s willing to risk it anyway.
The senator and his wife — Erin, a lawyer for the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom — last week announced they are launching a new group calld Love Life Initiative to push antiabortion ballot measures and “pro-family” policies, believing the pro-life movement has lost momentum since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade three years ago.
One of their goals? To run a Super Bowl ad touting the value of family.
“Scoring pro-life victories in the courtroom is important,” the couple says on the group’s website, “but if we as a nation fail to see the inherent value of each and every life, we will lose the argument on abortion and the very soul of our nation.”
That message has put Hawley in the president’s crosshairs once again.
‘Hawley learned nothing’
Trump thinks abortion is a losing issue for the GOP. His team wants Hawley to get with the program before next year’s midterm elections get underway.
“Picking a fight on an issue like abortion in a midterm is the height of asinine stupidity,” an anonymous Trump adviser told Axios on Monday.
Trump’s instincts on the matter might be right in this case.
The end of Roe v. Wade resulted in the rise of harsh state-level bans on abortion in a number of red states — including Missouri — but the electoral backlash was enormous: Voters in Kansas and Missouri either rejected antiabortion measures or struck them down, surprising conservative Republicans and putting them on defense.
Trump reacted accordingly: He neutered the antiabortion plank of the GOP platform during last year’s election, and this year has been slow to crack down on the abortion drug mifepristone despite pleas from Hawley and other antiabortion activists.
The irony here, of course, is that Trump appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who helped strike down abortion rights. It’s his own fault the abortion issue threatens GOP prospects, even if he wants to put the genie back in the bottle.
That doesn’t usually work, of course, and Trump will never take responsibility for his own mistakes. But his team is cranky with Hawley for refusing to go along with his abortion backtracking.
“Clearly,” a second Trump adviser told Axios, “Sen. Hawley and his political team learned nothing from the 2022 elections, when the SCOTUS abortion ruling resuscitated the Democrats in the midterms.”
Social conservatives take the long view
Trump might be right about the short-term effects of Hawley’s crusade. The president is a short-term thinker after all, and clearly is desperate not to lose a GOP majority in Congress next year.
But the antiabortion movement? It takes the long view.
Social conservatives spent a half-century following Roe v. Wade building their power — both within the GOP and on the U.S. Supreme Court — before they managed to get the ruling reversed. The movement has been around for awhile. It will be here after Trump leaves the scene.
So will Hawley, for that matter. Trump’s term ends in 2028. And Hawley is reportedly eyeing a presidential run of his own.
There is reason to be skeptical of Hawley’s prospects. Antiabortion conservatives may hold some sway in the GOP, but they rarely get the party’s presidential nomination. Remember the White House campaigns of Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum? It’s no surprise if you don’t.
Hawley is unlikely ever to openly rebel against Trump. His latest move, though, suggests a belief he can weather the president’s ire and come out ahead. We’re about to find out if he’s right.
