Politico: ‘Election Gambit Blows Up On Hawley and Cruz’

“What I was doing was the exact opposite of inciting violence,” the Texas Republican said in an interview. “What I was doing is debating principle and law and the Constitution on the floor of the United States Senate. That is how we resolve issues in this country without resorting to violence.”

Both Cruz and Hawley are trying to do a kind of Jedi mind trick, where they convince everybody that what it looks like they were doing is not in fact what they were doing. What they were doing is quite noble and above board, they insist. They’re having a heck of a time selling that argument, not surprisingly.

Hawley’s political patron, former Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.), turned on him, calling his support the “biggest mistake I’ve ever made.” His top donor, David Humphreys, said he should be censured. Hawley’s book publisher dropped him, interfering with a key element of many presidential campaigns. Cruz, meanwhile, is facing a redux of the backlash he received for egging on a shutdown in 2013 over a failed effort to defund Obamacare.

“Everyone can see through, and look: understand they’re running for president,” said former Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a frequent Trump critic. “[They] think they’re getting a pass and they can be popular with the base. And there’s no harm done. There was harm done.”

Most people would say five dead, over fifty arrested, destruction of government property, etc. was harm. No argument there. And now there are consequences.

Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) are all calling on both men to resign.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said in an interview that he lobbied Hawley, Cruz and Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.) to change their minds on objecting to Biden’s electoral votes when senators were holed up in a secure area following the attack. Lankford and Daines backed off “when they saw the danger of what happened,” Manchin said. He told Hawley to “please think of what you’re doing, please reconsider what you’re doing.” […]

“There’s no way they cannot be complicit in this. That they think they can walk away and say, ‘I just exercised my right as a senator?’ Especially after we came back here and after they saw what happened,” Manchin said. “I don’t know how you can live with yourself right now knowing that people lost their lives.” […]

Hawley and Cruz were fundraising while the MAGAverse was rioting in the streets and the National Guard was being called out. That is what is going to bring about their day of reckoning. They’re using Donald Trump’s playbook, create a show on TV and start grifting. But it’s not going to work out as well for them. That show just closed out of town, with horrid reviews.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said election objectors “will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), also a potential presidential contender, said on Fox News that “these senators, as insurrectionists were literally storming the Capitol, were sending out fundraising emails.”

“Sen. Hawley was doing something that was really dumbass,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) told NPR Friday. “It was a terrible, terrible idea and you don’t lie to the American people.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said that while he “strongly disagreed” with Cruz and Hawley’s decision to challenge the election results, “there is a difference between weighing in on a particular issue and inciting violence.” Daines, meanwhile, said that Cruz was “very clear that this was not about overturning the election.”

One GOP senator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, predicted the caucus would face a reckoning over Hawley and Cruz.

Hawley and Cruz bet on the wrong horse. The riot at the Capitol forever contextualized the Trump presidency. Before the riot, his hallmark was his mishandling of the pandemic. That was damaging enough. But when the riot happened, the paradigm shifted — and apparently a lot of the Trumpites didn’t get the memo, most notably Cruz and Hawley.

January 6, 2021 is a lot like December 7, 1941. It is a day that will live in infamy because the events on that day were a watershed in American history.