Josh Hawley, Senator from Missouri (O, blush, Missouri!), is determined to become President of the United States, an ambition so radioactive that he glows. He has not closed his mouth since he was elected and latches on to anything that will get him a mention in the media. 

He has tried to sell himself as the Champion of the Common Man against “the elites.” This is a failed pretense, for the claim of a wealthy, Ivy-league elitist like Hawley to identify with the common man is laughable. He claims to be an advocate for “small town values,” though he spent only his early childhood in a small town, and the rest of his life in elitist institutions. So this ambition-driven plutocrat masquerading as a “country lawyer” has proven so unconvincing that Josh is re-packaging himself.

He’s trying to dress up in Trump’s old clothes and present himself now as the Champion of the Bigots and the Crazies. He, along with other unscrupulous Republicans, is competing to win the support of the dregs of Trump’s “base.” His recent announcement that he plans on January 6^th to stand up for all the voters who share Trump’s delusions about the late election is ridiculous, but not to the baser elements of the base. So we’re seeing the entry onto the political stage of another demagogue who, like his hero, Mr. Trump, wants not to be President, but to be king.

Since his election, Missouri’s Senator Josh Hawley has done several stunts for the purpose, apparently, of drawing to himself the attention of the far right. Now we read that he’s given a bravura dog-whistle oration to the chauvinist National Conservatism Conference. Urging the “Blut und Boden” values of the 1930s, he denounced “citizens of the world” as “rootless cosmopolitans.” He is quoted as saying of “a powerful upper class” with “cosmopolitan priorities” that they “run businesses or oversee universities here, but their primary loyalty is to the global community.” What a skillful blend of class warfare and anti-intellectualism and old-time anti-semitism. Of course, with a little adjustment he could say the same of American Catholics who work and teach here, but whose primary loyalty is to the City of God.

All this leads me to the question: Is Josh Hawley a genuine neo-nazi, or is he just talking like one to ingratiate himself with those who are?