Josh Hawley doesn't want to talk about it

He's had a very bad week. A viral picture of him fist-pumping a crowd that would soon attack the Capitol, followed by having a book deal dropped by Simon & Schuster and a major donor calling for him to be censured.

Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz have positioned themselves as heirs to President Donald Trump’s base. But their decision to embrace Trump’s election challenge is fueling major blowback — even as they remain largely unrepentant after this week’s deadly riot.

[...]

“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.”

Hawley, who was photographed fist pumping protesters before they raided the Capitol, declined to be interviewed for this story.

  Politico

Maybe if he keeps quiet people will forget?

Some in Trumpworld are still cheering them on, and they may ultimately win support from the party’s base if they run for president. But after rioters stormed the Capitol in a bid to halt certification of Joe Biden’s election, Hawley and Cruz are facing immediate consequences.

Somehow, I don't think so. Trump's base is Trump's alone. It's a personality cult, and he's absolutely unique. (But not in a good way.) And if Trump doesn't want to run in 2024, and he's not in prison by then - and actually, probably even if he is - he'll definitely want to choose who will be the Republican nominee. I'm guessing that would be Junior, assuming HE's not in jail.

Also, if Hawley and Cruz are fighting for the same voters, they're just going to split the votes.

Hawley was first to announce a challenge to Biden’s win. Cruz followed up with his own plan to object coupled with a call for the creation of a 10-day electoral commission that initially had the backing of 10 of his GOP colleagues but had no chance of being established.

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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.

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“[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,” [said former Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.)]

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

For those two attention hounds, I'd guess the chances of that are slim to none.

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.”

Not a chance. Too much personal ambition to consider the country. In that way, he's much like Trump.

[Cruz and Hawley b]oth fought to become faces of the efforts and everyone in Washington thinks they have spent the last month positioning themselves for the next presidential race. They sent fundraising solicitations on Wednesday afternoon as the riot outside the Capitol spiraled out of control.

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Hours later, after rioters were finally cleared from the Capitol, Hawley still objected to Pennsylvania. And Cruz voted with Hawley against certifying the election in the Keystone State. Five other GOP senators joined them.

“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.”

Well, Joe, it's called lack of a conscience.

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

“Their whole antic, if you will, is a lie. It’s built on a lie and both know that,” the senator said. “To the degree that perpetuating this lie helped incite the crowd, that’s a responsibility that Ted and Josh sort of own, along with Donald Trump.”

Not "sort of".

“They saw through his blind ambitious act and it just wasn’t viewed as genuine,” former 2016 Trump campaign aide Bryan Lanza said of Trump voters’ view of Hawley. “They don’t think he’s a real MAGA supporter. … He just comes across as insincere.”

Because he is, and unlike Trump, he hasn't spent his whole life performing in front of an audience.

Much of the recent outrage has centered on Hawley, currently the youngest senator, who is trying to channel Trump’s populism into tangible policy. He worked with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to advance $2,000 stimulus checks, has called for federal subsidization of jobs during the pandemic and tanked his own party’s judicial nominees.

Honestly, those are actually quite popular ideas. He at least has a finger on the pulse of the American masses.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.