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1/10 Those looking past Trump shld watch floor speech by Sen Josh Hawley @HawleyMO on Bostock opinion. https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4887276/user-clip-sen-hawley-speech-june-16-2020. For law nerds, headline is that Josh declares conservative legal movement (that birthed Josh) dead because 6-3 majority used textualism to expand Title7.
2/10 The easy liberal gibe is that for legal conservatives, it was never about interpretive method, just results. It is kinda funny to watch Josh excoriate Gorsuch and Roberts as apostates & super-legislators betraying the constitution & the conservative religious faithful...
3/10 Moreover, given that Josh & his wife were both Roberts clerks, speech was very much biting hand that fed him. But that's Josh. His loyalty is neither to ideology nor persons, but to himself & his singular focus on becoming president. Thus, important part of speech is not ...
4/10 ...the part about Bostock and legal conservatism. It's the back half where Josh limns his plan for assuming Trump's mantle: 1) Build his base among religious paleo-conservatives by promising even more reactionary judges; 2) go all-in on Trump's greatest hits --
5/10... anti-immigrant, protectionist on trade, protecting traditional social values (as defined by religious conservatives; 3) (smartly) claim to want to help all Americans with things that worry them, like costs of education, jobs, etc, using "religious conservative" ideas..
6/10... which he doesn't detail; and 4) claim to be against helping the rich and in favor of helping working people...without quite saying how. In short, this was not a speech about law or legal methods. It was instead...
7/10 Josh's vision of a new religious & social conservative/economic populist alliance he thinks can replace pre-Trump Republican coalition of religious & social conservatives, economic libertarians, and wealthy capitalists. A new alliance he thinks will take him to White House..
8/10 It could work. The religious/social conservatism & anti-immigrant stuff could hold Trump's white base. The economic populism, if accompanied by serious proposals & willingness to employ activist gov't, could draw enough Blacks, Latinos, and others to fracture Dem coalition.
9/10 And Josh is not bound by either political or legal orthodoxy. He'll propose whatever it takes to make him president. And I think he's smart enough to realize that traditional small-government approaches to social problems can't expand Republican base.
10/10 Still, I'm skeptical. 1) Don't see Repub Party without big business & can't quite see how Josh's new coalition includes them. 2) Josh himself. Immensely gifted, yes. But naked ambition, self-righteousness & zealotry ooze from every pore. Not sure it sells. We'll see...
