Unlikely 'working-class' hero emerges in the heart of Senate GOP: report

The New York Times on Monday painted Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) as a kind of "working class" hero, claiming he supports lower-income Americans over elites.

According to The Times, Hawley might be a member of the elite as the son of a banker and a graduate of the Ivy League, but because he embraces populist ideals, he's different from others in the MAGA world.

“His ultimate goal is to break the alliance the social conservatives have had with the corporate world since the Reagan era,” said Matt Stoller, a former aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and policy advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL).

Stoller, a long-time populist himself, has sung Hawley's praises for years as the Republican lawmaker exhibited a willingness to take on corporate greed.

ALSO READ: Josh Hawley: ‘I’m advocating Christian nationalism’

“It’s fascinating how Josh Hawley keeps rolling out pro-worker platforms, like payroll support, as well as anti-monopoly policy ideas,” Stoller tweeted in May 2020. “And yet liberals and leftists use calling Hawley a fraud or a fascist as an in-group social signal to each other.”

While Hawley might oppose cuts to Medicaid, he's also still holding tight to his fixation with manliness, and announced he supports Christian nationalism. As a Kansas City Star opinion column pointed out, Hawley has also grown increasingly extreme on reproductive freedom.

Among Hawley's anti-corporation actions was one in 2017, when, as the Missouri attorney general, he sued opioid manufacturers, something other states have done in an effort to score large settlements for the state. Oklahoma, for example, reached a settlement with Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, in 2019.

"More than 3,000 state and local governments have targeted opioid makers," the National Association of Attorneys General said on its website.

Hawley then targeted Google that same year, in 2017, over accusations that it violated antitrust laws.

In May 2019, Hawley even took to the Senate floor to rant about “big banks, big tech, big multinational corporations, along with their allies in the academy and the media” as aristocratic architects of a society that “works mainly for themselves.”

His time in the body “has only confirmed how very real the concentration of economic and political power is," he said, according to the Times.

“Donald Trump’s election showed this: If the Republican Party is going to be a true majority party, we have to be pro-worker. The voters are giving us a chance now, but they’ve not bought in. We have to deliver," the Times also quoted Hawley saying.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) called that kind of populism more like the left.

“I feel like we’re in a blender of changing political identities,” he told the Times in an interview. “This populism reminds me of Democratic liberals in the ’70s: apologists for the Russians, protectionists, skeptics of law enforcement. And now these populists are saying, ‘We’re tired of war,’ when we’re not even in one. The last time Republicans were this isolationist was the 1930s, and we lost Congress for most of the next 60 years.”

The piece goes on to cite his "aloofness," saying it "extended even to those who find common cause with him, like Representative Rev. Emanuel Cleaver II" (D-MO), who supported the effort to improve rural mail delivery despite his Kansas City district.

“He’s our state’s senior senator, but he’s not actively involved in our delegation,” Mr. Cleaver said.

The report concluded, stating that Hawley "is thought to harbor presidential ambitions" but isn't overtaking President Donald Trump.

Read the full report here.