Can Josh Hawley change the GOP?

The junior senator from Missouri is the most interesting Republican elected official in the U.S.

Josh Hawley.
(Image credit: Illustrated | ALEX EDELMAN/AFP/Getty Images, Sergey Tinyakov/iStock)

They really hate it, don't they? I'm talking about the Senate Republicans who cannot believe that their colleague Josh Hawley would lay into a Michigan district court nominee who once compared Catholics who oppose same-sex marriage to the KKK, upsetting a cozy arrangement between the GOP-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee and the Wolverine State's two moderate-ish Democratic senators, Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters.

When Michael Bogren withdrew himself from consideration on Tuesday following Hawley's masterful (and occasionally hilarious) examination of his record as an attorney, Susan Collins of Maine said that she was "disturbed." "We need to be real careful going down this rabbit trail," said Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, a freshman whose Democratic opponent in 2016 challenged him from the right on social issues. Texas's John Cornyn, the grand old man of civility in the Senate GOP caucus, was also upset about how things went down, but he conceded that pushing for Bogren's nomination after Hawley's questioning would have been an "unnecessary embarrassment."

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.