Josh Hawley’s Mission to Remake the GOP
Washington is in an unusually high state of chaos. Impeachment hearings are proceeding dramatically in the House. Donald Trump has taken to tweeting videos about the purported “coup” being staged against his presidency by Democrats, complete with an ominous musical score. But from the view of Senator Josh Hawley’s office, its walls covered in tasteful kid art and a large desk offering up a mugful of crisp yellow pencils, it’s hard to tell that anything is amiss. The Missouri freshman is too busy laying out the future of the Republican Party to pay much mind to the partisan death spiral unfolding around him.
By Hawley’s own account, some conservatives on Capitol Hill have spent the past three years with their eyes tightly shut, waiting for the Trump era to pass and everything to return to normal. “That’s not going to happen,” he told me in an interview this week. If the Republican Party returns to its pre-Trump ideological defaults—standing up for big business over
