A number of liberal politicians and media outlets criticized Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, often with misinformation, after protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A year later, the Republican lawmaker is doing just fine.
Large companies said they would stop donating to politicians such as Hawley, KCUR radio reported. The political action committee for Hallmark, the Kansas City-based greeting card company, asked for its money back from Hawley, Missouri’s two largest newspapers, the recently bankrupt Kansas City Star and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, called on Hawley to resign. U.S. Senator Jack Danforth, whom Hawley had credited as a political mentor, repudiated him.
Despite the opposition, Hawley’s approval rating was higher last July – 52 percent – than it was the previous year. And although corporate support for Hawley has slowed, his fundraising remains prodigious, even though he is not up for re-election until 2024. In 2021, Hawley raised more than $7 million by Sept. 30, most of it small contributions from individual donors. By contrast, Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican who is up for re-election later this year, raised just more than $1.78 million over the same period.
READ: Pentagon will monitor service members’ social media
“I think what happened with last January to Josh is kind of what’s happened to a lot of individuals who have been associated with the insurrection, and that is not much,” said Terry Smith, a political science professor at Columbia College in Missouri. “Many of them are not being held to account and it’s kind of, `nothing to see here, life goes on.’”
Hawley has condemned the attack on the Capitol but stands by his vote against certifying Biden’s victory.
“The most surprising outcome — and the day’s true legacy — was the left’s attempt to use the Capitol unrest to foster a permanent climate of fear and repression,” Hawley wrote in an op-ed piece this week.
Political scientists now say he’s right. Polling reveals American attitudes of Jan. 6 have changed considerably. Most Americans are against the Democrat investigation in which Nancy Pelosi refused to seat the ranking Republican member, instead choosing Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney. Plus, FBI testimony has revealed facts that contradict the narrative of both Democrats and media. The FBI in 2021 also released a report stating the actions of the 300 who entered the Capital did not constitute an “insurrection.”
In addition, a Des Moines Register poll, considered the gold-standard in political polling, found this week that Former President Donald Trump is the most popular president in the poll’s history. The eye-opening polls comes while President Joe Biden’s poll numbers continue to reach new lows over his handling of the pandemic, Afghanistan, the economy, immigration and inflation.
Nevertheless, progressive Rep. Cori Bush of St. Louis introduced a resolution that called for the investigation and expulsion of any members of Congress who sought to overturn 2020 election results or incited violence at the Capitol. The resolution was referred to a House committee last March but has had no official action or hearings since then.
Democrats inferred this week that the purpose of their investigation is to prevent Trump from holding office again, as yet more polls show him beating Biden in a hypothetical 2024 matchup.
Alan Goforth | Metro Voice