Buyer's remorse....
If Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley had a conscience, he’d resign. He’ll have to be removed
BY THE KANSAS CITY STAR EDITORIAL BOARD
January 07, 2021 04:03 PM,
If Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley had shown any evidence that there’s a conscience in there somewhere, underneath the ambition and the artifice and the uncommon combo of striving and laziness that he’s somehow made work for him, then we wouldn’t be where we are right now.
We wouldn’t, that is, be wondering what to say to a man who, having so disgraced his office, and our state, must either resign or be removed from the U.S. Senate.
Having led the parade to the edge of a cliff, Hawley pretends to be astonished by what happened next. And unlike those Republicans who sobered up after seeing the U.S. Capitol trashed, he continues to pretend that the election was stolen from President Donald Trump, who claimed widespread voter fraud even when he really did win, in 2016.
Former Missouri Sen. John C. Danforth, an actual man of honor, told The Star that he blamed his former protégé for Wednesday’s riot. “But for him it wouldn’t have happened. But for him the approval of the Electoral College votes would have been simply a formality. He made it into something that it was a specific way to express the view that the election was stolen. He was responsible.”
We agree.
Danforth also said he blames himself for helping launch Hawley’s political career: “I thought he was special. And I did my best to encourage people to support him both for attorney general and later the U.S. Senate and it was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life.”
If Hawley had more in common with Danforth, he’d be ashamed of himself for cheering on those waving Trump and Confederate flags who desecrated and ransacked what really is a sacred civic space.
But he doesn’t and he won’t.
This is someone who even after surveying the wreckage and the body count — four dead, among those in the MAGA mob who believed the lie that the election had been stolen — did not change course at all.
Instead, he praised the police, meekly tut-tutted at the violence and delivered more false remarks about nonexistent election fraud just as planned.
Other Trump supporters are lining up to say they’ve finally had enough.
Even The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page called Trump’s actions “impeachable,” and said he should resign. “In concise summary,” they wrote, “on Wednesday the leader of the executive branch incited a crowd to march on the legislative branch.”
The Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote that, “Mr. Trump is a sick, bad man and therefore, as president, a dangerous one. He has grown casually bloody-minded, nattering on about force and denouncing even his own vice president as a coward for not supporting unconstitutional measures.”
Other Senate Republicans who had been planning to keep pretending Joe Biden hadn’t won in a free and fair election backed out after Wednesday’s riot. And after Trump told those on a violent rampage, “Go home. We love you. You’re very special.”
Even the president’s golfing buddy, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, said he was done: “Count me out; enough is enough.” Not our man in Washington, though. Not long after shots were fired and lives lost, Hawley got up and promised to keep right on objecting to the election results.
We can’t appeal to a sense of decency that doesn’t exist.
But we can say that Hawley, who gave a raised fist of encouragement to the likes of that proud lout who put his feet up on a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, cannot continue to be our man in Washington, and so will have to be expelled.
Those of you in the Senate who understand what he did, in full possession of the facts and the consequences of twisting them, must do more than censure his treasonous behavior.
He’ll still be the poster boy of the radical right, but if we’re going to keep our democracy, there has to be a penalty for being the ringleader of those encouraging overturning an election.
Newly sworn-in Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall also disgraced his office by objecting to the Electoral College results confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Marshall is a follower, not a leader, and since he made no sense in his first speech on the Senate floor at least cannot be accused of misleading anyone.
If Hawley had stepped to the microphone on Wednesday night and said even one true thing — that the election wasn’t stolen — it would have meant something. Because some among those millions who really have been convinced that Trump won in a landslide would have listened to him.
Now, as Republicans at least discuss invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office, Josh Hawley has shown that he’ll be the last Trumper standing. In fact, he may finally have achieved his goal of out-Trumping Trump, since even the president finally conceded on Thursday and said the fight was over.
It will be up to those senators who’ve only recently remembered they do know the difference between facts and fiction to end Hawley’s short and shameful political career.
And ultimately, it will be up to Missouri Republicans to penalize his cynical bet that anything he did, as long as he kept quoting Abraham Lincoln and genuflecting before Donald J. Trump, would without fail be rewarded by you.
Hawley said in a statement that he would “never apologize for giving voice to the millions of Missourians and Americans who have concerns about the integrity of our elections. That’s my job, and I will keep doing it.”
They have concerns because you and others told them lies. That you think it’s your job to keep telling them the lies that have already gotten four of them killed is inexcusable. And it’s why you don’t deserve to stay on our payroll.
Read more here:
https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials...rylink=cpy
If Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley had a conscience, he’d resign. He’ll have to be removed
BY THE KANSAS CITY STAR EDITORIAL BOARD
January 07, 2021 04:03 PM,
If Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley had shown any evidence that there’s a conscience in there somewhere, underneath the ambition and the artifice and the uncommon combo of striving and laziness that he’s somehow made work for him, then we wouldn’t be where we are right now.
We wouldn’t, that is, be wondering what to say to a man who, having so disgraced his office, and our state, must either resign or be removed from the U.S. Senate.
Having led the parade to the edge of a cliff, Hawley pretends to be astonished by what happened next. And unlike those Republicans who sobered up after seeing the U.S. Capitol trashed, he continues to pretend that the election was stolen from President Donald Trump, who claimed widespread voter fraud even when he really did win, in 2016.
Former Missouri Sen. John C. Danforth, an actual man of honor, told The Star that he blamed his former protégé for Wednesday’s riot. “But for him it wouldn’t have happened. But for him the approval of the Electoral College votes would have been simply a formality. He made it into something that it was a specific way to express the view that the election was stolen. He was responsible.”
We agree.
Danforth also said he blames himself for helping launch Hawley’s political career: “I thought he was special. And I did my best to encourage people to support him both for attorney general and later the U.S. Senate and it was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life.”
If Hawley had more in common with Danforth, he’d be ashamed of himself for cheering on those waving Trump and Confederate flags who desecrated and ransacked what really is a sacred civic space.
But he doesn’t and he won’t.
This is someone who even after surveying the wreckage and the body count — four dead, among those in the MAGA mob who believed the lie that the election had been stolen — did not change course at all.
Instead, he praised the police, meekly tut-tutted at the violence and delivered more false remarks about nonexistent election fraud just as planned.
Other Trump supporters are lining up to say they’ve finally had enough.
Even The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page called Trump’s actions “impeachable,” and said he should resign. “In concise summary,” they wrote, “on Wednesday the leader of the executive branch incited a crowd to march on the legislative branch.”
The Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote that, “Mr. Trump is a sick, bad man and therefore, as president, a dangerous one. He has grown casually bloody-minded, nattering on about force and denouncing even his own vice president as a coward for not supporting unconstitutional measures.”
Other Senate Republicans who had been planning to keep pretending Joe Biden hadn’t won in a free and fair election backed out after Wednesday’s riot. And after Trump told those on a violent rampage, “Go home. We love you. You’re very special.”
Even the president’s golfing buddy, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, said he was done: “Count me out; enough is enough.” Not our man in Washington, though. Not long after shots were fired and lives lost, Hawley got up and promised to keep right on objecting to the election results.
We can’t appeal to a sense of decency that doesn’t exist.
But we can say that Hawley, who gave a raised fist of encouragement to the likes of that proud lout who put his feet up on a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, cannot continue to be our man in Washington, and so will have to be expelled.
Those of you in the Senate who understand what he did, in full possession of the facts and the consequences of twisting them, must do more than censure his treasonous behavior.
He’ll still be the poster boy of the radical right, but if we’re going to keep our democracy, there has to be a penalty for being the ringleader of those encouraging overturning an election.
Newly sworn-in Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall also disgraced his office by objecting to the Electoral College results confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Marshall is a follower, not a leader, and since he made no sense in his first speech on the Senate floor at least cannot be accused of misleading anyone.
If Hawley had stepped to the microphone on Wednesday night and said even one true thing — that the election wasn’t stolen — it would have meant something. Because some among those millions who really have been convinced that Trump won in a landslide would have listened to him.
Now, as Republicans at least discuss invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office, Josh Hawley has shown that he’ll be the last Trumper standing. In fact, he may finally have achieved his goal of out-Trumping Trump, since even the president finally conceded on Thursday and said the fight was over.
It will be up to those senators who’ve only recently remembered they do know the difference between facts and fiction to end Hawley’s short and shameful political career.
And ultimately, it will be up to Missouri Republicans to penalize his cynical bet that anything he did, as long as he kept quoting Abraham Lincoln and genuflecting before Donald J. Trump, would without fail be rewarded by you.
Hawley said in a statement that he would “never apologize for giving voice to the millions of Missourians and Americans who have concerns about the integrity of our elections. That’s my job, and I will keep doing it.”
They have concerns because you and others told them lies. That you think it’s your job to keep telling them the lies that have already gotten four of them killed is inexcusable. And it’s why you don’t deserve to stay on our payroll.
Read more here:
https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials...rylink=cpy
