Can Sen. Josh Hawley be taken seriously after so much flip-flopping? | Opinion
Josh Hawley always chickens out.
No, that doesn’t have the same acronymic TACO beauty of “Trump Always Chickens Out,” a saying that briefly became popular on Wall Street last year. But it’s true nonetheless.
When the Missouri senator takes his most dramatic stands — on Medicaid, in defense of Congress’ constitutional power over war-making — you can be sure he will back down if President Donald Trump is on the other side of the issue.
He made that clear on Wednesday.
You’ll remember that just a week ago, Hawley was one of five Republican senators who joined Democrats to advance a bill that would force Trump to seek congressional approval before taking any additional military action against Venezuela.
“To me, this is all about going forward,” Hawley told reporters after that vote. “If the president should determine, ‘You know what? I need to put troops on the ground in Venezuela,’ I think that would require Congress to weigh in.”
It looked like a bold stand for a senator who always likes to be on the right side of Trump. The president certainly made his pleasure clear, ranting on Truth Social that Hawley and his four GOP colleagues “should never be elected to office again.”
The pressure worked. On Wednesday, Hawley and Sen. Todd Young of Indiana reversed their votes. The bill failed. Trump, it seems, has a free hand to do whatever he wants in Venezuela.
So what changed?
“Well, for me, this has always been about ground troops,” Hawley said Wednesday night on Fox News. “What the secretary of state said to me very clearly is we’re not doing that. We don’t have ground troops in Venezuela. This is not another Iraq. We’re not going to occupy Venezuela. You know what? That’s good enough for me.”
“Good enough for me.” That’s either glib or gullible. Hawley — the former constitutional law professor — decided to trade away Congress’ authority in the hope that the Trump White House will keep its word. Good luck with that.
First Medicaid, now this
There’s a word for the kind of behavior that Hawley has demonstrated in the first year of the second Trump administration: “feckless.”
Weak. Ineffective. Undependable.
Before this week, of course, Hawley’s biggest backtrack was on Medicaid. He wrote a guest commentary for The New York Times declaring that Republicans had to save the program — not cut it — in order to be the party of the working class.
After that, he voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill that … cut Medicaid.
Hawley tried to erase the embarrassment by introducing a new bill to reverse the cuts. Like it would make a difference. Republican leadership shunted it off to committee to die a quiet death.
So much for that.
Presidential chances in 2028?
Wednesday’s Venezuela vote, then, seems to indicate a pattern. Hawley likes to make a big show of being an unorthodox, independent-minded Republican. When the chips are down, though, he flees for the safety of the group.
And the group — in this case, the GOP — pretty much does whatever Donald Trump tells it to do.
Hawley 2028? Probably not
The question now is: What does Hawley get for his flip-flopping?
One thing it won’t get him, I’m willing to wager, is a chair behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
There is a lot of talk these days that Hawley has his eyes on the White House in 2028, after all. But if recent history shows anything, it’s that GOP primary voters love an alpha male — somebody who can establish his dominance over the pack.
Hawley is the guy who egged on and then ran from the crowd on Jan. 6, 2021. He’s the guy who stood for Medicaid and backtracked. And he’s the guy who just changed his mind about legally restraining the president’s power to send troops into Venezuela.
Put it this way: No one ever won a presidential election through repeated displays of submissiveness.
Maybe Hawley will be the first. But he’s running out of second chances. Once a politician gets a reputation for fecklessness, it’s hard to shake off.
This story was originally published January 15, 2026 at 11:34 AM.
