WASHINGTON – One of his first most important sponsors now says that supporting him “was the worst mistake I’ve ever made in my life” and a major donor asked him to be censored by the Senate.
This is only part of the condemnation that comes from Senator Josh Hawley’s path since the Missouri Republican became the first senator to announce that he would oppose the counting of votes from the Electoral College and then moved forward with his plan, even after a pro-President Donald Trump crowd stormed the Capitol on Wednesday.
The biggest newspapers in his home state asked him to resign. His publisher canceled the contract with him for an upcoming book. He was ridiculed by Democrats and Republicans for leading the futile objection effort.
And a viral photo of Hawley entering the Capitol before the riot, showing the senator in a skinny suit, perfectly combed hair and raising his fist toward the assembled crowd, has already become a lasting image of a day that will not be soon forgotten.
“It was like a Dukakis-on-the-tank moment,” a Republican strategist told NBC News in reference to a famous attack announcement for the 1988 Democratic presidential candidate, “in which he just looked fake, out of place and an idiot. “
At 41, Hawley is the youngest acting senator and is considered a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2,024. Since his election to the Senate in 2018, he has earned a place for himself as the top Republican critic of the tech giants – an area of politics that has generated him a substantial following and press coverage. This has now been overshadowed by your objection effort.
After the rebellion, Hawley condemned the violence on Capitol Hill and said he was simply opposing voters to give his voters a voice in Missouri, a state that went to Trump for 15 points in 2020.
“I don’t think that blaming him for what happened … is the right person to point the finger at,” a Republican aide told NBC News. “I think Trump was the only one at the rally just before, cheering everyone up. Trump has been doing all this for weeks since the election. He’s getting everyone excited, and I think the reason why Senator Hawley did the what he did was pressure from his constituents. “
However, Hawley’s counterpart, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., Was not among the handful of Republicans to object. Nor were others from states where Trump won resounding victories in November, such as Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Who condemned the effort. Congress finally counted on voters for President-elect Joe Biden, setting the stage for his inauguration later this month.
“I mean, did he have to do that?” the aide asked Hawley. “This is up for debate.”
Before any violence occurred on the Capitol, Hawley was under fire from colleagues, whether they were Senator Jeanne Shaheen, DN.H., who told MSNBC last week that she believed her effort “borders on sedition or betrayal” or the senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah., Who said the objections were simply an act to “increase the political ambitions of some”, alluding to possible presidential aspirations for 2024.
Speaking at the Senate floor after the riot, Hawley said the violence “will not be tolerated”, but an investigation into allegations of electoral fraud was needed.
There was no evidence presented of widespread electoral fraud that would affect elections in any of the undecided states that Trump lost, and the belief that there was such a fraud took root among Republican voters with the president and others promoting them.
Hawley specifically objected to Pennsylvania voters because he believed a 2019 law that expanded postal voting violated the state constitution. However, as Sens. Bob Casey, D-Pa. And Pat Toomey, R-Pa., Said in defending the state election, such constitutional objections to the law – which was passed by a Republican-controlled legislature – only emerged after Trump lost.
“We witness today the damage that can result when men with power and responsibility refuse to acknowledge the truth,” said Toomey. “We saw bloodshed because a demagogue decided to spread falsehoods and seize suspicion on his own American countrymen. Let us not encourage such a mistake. We will reject this motion.”
Hawley “is talking about Pennsylvania because he wants to come here and run for president someday,” Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Pa., tweeted. “The lies he told inspired today’s violence. He still tells those lies. Pennsylvania will never forget.”
Rick Tyler, who served as communications director for Senator Ted Cruz’s campaign in 2016 (the Texas senator led his own objection to the election results), said the criticisms from Hawley are “well deserved”.
“Members of Congress have the right to challenge voters, but doing so must be carefully assessed against substantial evidence of malfeasance,” said Tyler. “In the case of Senator Hawley, there was no such evidence to suggest that voters were not legitimate. It is not good enough to say that you are representing voters who believe the election was rigged when that statement was based on lies and conspiracies that were completely disproved by election officials, recounts, lawsuits and a lack of credible evidence. “
“Senator Hawley’s job was to represent the truth,” he added. “Instead, he chose to accompany the president and others, namely Senator Cruz, to incite an insurrection.”
Amid Hawley’s objections, the comments he made during the president’s impeachment trial last year began to resurface. At the time, Hawley said that impeachment was tantamount to “overthrowing a democratic election because you don’t like the outcome, because you believe that election was somehow corrupted, when, in fact, the evidence shows it wasn’t.” He called it “crazy, frankly”.
Hawley’s rise to republican politics was rapid. He was elected to the Senate less than two years in his first term as attorney general in Missouri, the first elected office he held. He was not someone who dominated the headlines at the time, although he drew attention for blaming human trafficking in the sexual revolution of the late 1960s.
The senator has established credentials, having graduated from Stanford and Yale, where he attended law school, and having worked for the Supreme Court chief judge, John Roberts, who was where he met his future wife, Erin Morrow, herself as well. Roberts’ clerk.
In the days following his formal objection, the outrage at him grew like a snowball, although it remains unclear how it will affect his position with Republican voters.
“Supporting Josh and trying so hard to get him elected to the Senate was the worst mistake I ever made in my life,” former Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., And a mentor to the Senator, told the St. Louis Post – Dispatch on Thursday. “It is very dangerous for America to continue to promote this idea that the government does not work and that the vote was fraudulent.”
Shortly after that comment, Simon & Schuster, who would publish his next book “The Tyranny of Big Tech”, announced that he was canceling his contract with Hawley, pointing to the “deadly uprising”.
In addition, an increasing number of Democratic congressmen called for his immediate resignation, while Biden said that Hawley and Cruz were perpetuating “the big lie”.
Hawley responded to critics, tossing what he considered an “awake crowd” at the book’s publisher and saying that Biden’s comments were “unworthy, immature and undaunted”.
His office did not return a request for comment from NBC News about the negative reaction to his efforts. But in a statement to Missouri’s KSDK TV channel, Hawley said he “will never apologize for giving voice to the millions of Missourians and Americans who care about the integrity of our elections”.
Zack Roday, a former senior Republican aide to the House and campaign spokesman for former Mayor Paul Ryan, said some show of regret could be beneficial to Hawley.
“Admitting that he chose the wrong path or, at best, failed to express his electoral concerns would be a sign of character, confidence and, ultimately, strength,” said Roday.
Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist, told NBC News that he thinks “it is an exaggeration to call a procedural objection as a senator ‘incitement'”.
“But he should have ended his objection to voters after what happened,” he added. “He will probably be ineffective in the Senate now, at least for a while. It’s a shame because he’s impressive and brave. But who knows where things are going now?”