The Missouri Republican is the only senator to oppose every one of Biden’s Cabinet nominees to date.
The face of the Biden resistance is taking shape in the Senate: Josh Hawley.
In a prelude to a widely expected 2024 presidential bid, the Missouri Republican is the only senator to oppose every one of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees — a distinction sealed Tuesday when he voted against confirming new Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Hawley briefly held up the confirmation of another Cabinet official, for the Department of Homeland Security.
Even before Biden became president, Hawley initiated his bid for the Trump wing of the party by becoming the first senator to announce he would vote against the Electoral College results certifying the new president’s win, thrilling the outgoing president and his followers.
Hawley, whose Senate seat is up for election in 2024, has said repeatedly that he isn’t running for president.
“All I can say is no,” Hawley said in an interview on Wednesday, denying he has an overarching plan to oppose Biden’s nominees. “What can I say? That’s clearly not my focus.”
But aside from Hawley’s allies, no one familiar with presidential politics or the U.S. Senate is taking the 41-year-old at his word — especially after several Democratic senators used their opposition to early Trump appointees as a springboard to 2020.
“Hawley’s always been a young man in a hurry. He ran for attorney general on a plank he would serve all four years and [almost] immediately ran for U.S. Senate once he got in office,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist who last worked for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s political arm. He noted that Hawley established himself “by taking early shots at Big Tech and he really developed a taste for the wine, meaning he really liked all the attention. And he’s built on that.”
Reed said that “Hawley is becoming an exotic for Republican primary voters” because the Yale-educated lawyer has established a niche for himself as an early critic of social media companies while trying to appeal to working-class voters.
While the Missouri senator is “an asterisk in early Republican surveys I’ve seen,” Reed said, “he’s clearly laying groundwork for running for president in 2024. There’s no way else to explain this behavior.”
Sen. Josh Hawley gestures toward a crowd of Trump supporters gathered outside the U.S. Capitol to protest the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory on Jan. 6, 2021. | Francis Chung/E&E News and Politico
But it’s come at a cost.
His eagerness to ingratiate himself with Trump supporters led to a now infamous Jan. 6 photo of Hawley, outside the Capitol, pumping his fist in support of a throng of demonstrators who later went on to storm the building, vandalize it and temporarily delay the vote.
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Josh Hawley, whose Senate seat is up for election in 2024, has said repeatedly that he isn’t running for president.
But aside from his allies, no one familiar with presidential politics or the U.S. Senate is taking the 41-year-old at his word. https://t.co/nZ1aJLsAfH
— POLITICO (@politico) February 4, 2021
He can run all he wants, but I doubt he will get too many votes. If Trump or someone from his crime family runs, not even the Trump cult will want him.
And the rest of us knows he is a seditionist who belongs in prison. But should voters forget, a savvy opponent will remind them.
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