Claremont and Josh Hawley: Why the indignation about Trump's indictment is so disingenuous
Two snapshots of the conservative movement.
Two snapshots of the conservative moment today. Let's start with the last one first. Donald Trump has reportedly been indicted. Sen. Josh Hawley -- the same Josh Hawley who gave a fist-bumping salute to the insurrectionist crowds attempting to overturn a free and fair election on Jan. 6 -- went on Fox News to say this:
I would just say that this is not about Donald Trump, ultimately. This is about the United States of America. This is about whether the Constitution is still real in this country. This is about whether any American any American can expect the due process of law. And make no mistake, if Merrick Garland can send a SWAT team to the homes of pro life Catholics to terrorize them, if he can call parents domestic terrorists, if he can jail or try to jail Biden's political opponents, he can do whatever he wants to any American. That is what this is about. And that's not what we're fighting for.
There's a lot going on here, but Hawley is hinting at two big ideas:
The Biden Administration is not seeking to prosecute a violation of the law, but rather to punish a political enemy.*
Prosecuting and punishing political enemies for political reasons is bad.
Hawley might genuinely believe the first point, although I don't give him the benefit of the doubt.
But the second point? No, I don't believe him. And I don't believe any of the many other Republicans who are making that point either.
Why? That leads to the second snapshot. Here's an email I got today from the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank that's been a bastion of Trumpism pretty much since the beginning. Anyway, here's the relevant part of the email:
With due respect to Claremont: You sent me the video. I didn't agree to the conditions of semiprivacy. (The video is unlisted on YouTube, but it's not locked down. It's public, as far as I'm concerned.) So folks, here it is. Have at it. But I have to warn you: It's pretty tedious -- kind of a rehashing of right-wing complaints about "woke capitalism" and lefty domination of the universities urging conservatives to drop the nice guy act they've so humbly brought to the public square -- but one thing stood out to me: Center for the American Way of Life Executive Director Arthur Milikh speaks about this anti-left project in the language of conquest.
(05:14)
So again, the point of everything that we do is to try and reconquer, break up or humiliate some of these conquests that the left has accumulated over the last, let's say, 30 years, while at the same time building up our own power base.
(23:16)
The left is imperious. And unless there's no neutrality with them, and therefore unless we really reconquer retake these institutions, which you can only do.Through these methods of power, we will.Just continue to see ground after ground after ground until you're cornered.
(29:37)
BLM and DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] are identical. One shouldn't say it quite that way because that doesn't win you friends. But explaining the fact that the entire purpose of DEI is a transfer, a transference of wealth, honor, status and positions, pardon me, from one group to another as justice, so as to eventually conquer every single institution's, institution, no matter what.
(43:04)
But the truth is, it's also going to be somebody like a Trump or a DeSantis that becomes such a thorn in the side of the regime by speaking publicly, by owning the airwaves, by articulating how corrupt we're becoming as a civilization, by articulating a true assessment of the power structure of the country and what all of this leads to that will light a fire under a lot of people and at least create space for the right to regroup, to reconquer, to take territories of its own, like these red states, and govern its people sensibly constitutionally from there.
(49:59)
But overall, there should be an attitude of these things belong to us and we will not give them up and we will retake them and there are various levels of civil disobedience, perfectly legitimate methods that can be used to reconquer on the local level.
Let's be clear: This isn't the language of democracy or classical liberalism, of setting up rules and institutions. It's literally conquer or be conquered -- to take power and use it to push rival ideologies clear off the playing field. And really, that's no surprise. Illiberal righties like Josh Hammer and Rod Dreher have made plain their desire for an American version of Hungary's Victor Orban to use the power of the state to bring stomp on progressive forces -- metaphorically, of course -- and bring them to heel.
That provides us with our sense of things on the right as we circle back to Hawley. It's pretty clear, given that he sells merch of his insurrectionist fist-bump on his website, that defending the Constitution and its reality is, uh, highly situational. He speaks in the language of democratic classical liberalism to suggest that prosecuting political enemies for political reasons is bad, but I don't think he really believes that. He just wants Republicans to be the ones who do it.
* Hopefully it goes without saying, but I don't accept the premise that Trump is being prosecuted for political reasons. I do agree that prosecuting political enemies for political reasons is bad! That's not what is happening here.
Cross-posted at Cup O’Joel.
As for Hawley’s first point: He was rage-tweeting about the indictment before he (or anyone outside of a handful of lawyers) had read it. He was never going to find it persuasive, but that doesn’t matter to him.
Without engaging in whataboutism, I saw a number of left-leaning online people trolling GOP officials for being silent about the indictment. As they should have been ... at least about any specifics. It would have been fine to express disappointment that a former president had been indicted, but silence here may have been the wisest approach. I reserve the right to revise my remarks after we’ve seen the details.
For a couple years now, I've been waiting for someone to say something along the lines of "according to information provided to us by Dan Whozit, chief of staff to Senator Whichever, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, the Senator promised this, that, and the other thing in exchange for his vote on the Current Important Bill."
Good on you for doing so!