Search and Destroy by Ryan Lovelace

Author:Ryan Lovelace
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery Publishing

CHAPTER 8

Survival of the Fittest

In late September, the attorney general of Missouri, Josh Hawley, stood on a stage next to President Trump, who had come to the Ozarks to boost the thirty-eight-year-old’s challenge to Senator Claire McCaskill in her bid for reelection. The race was neck and neck for much of the summer. Two days before Trump’s visit, McCaskill announced that she would vote against Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Christine Blasey Ford had revealed herself as Kavanaugh’s accuser a week earlier, and it was not yet clear whether she would agree to talk to the Senate. Kavanaugh’s nomination was on shaky ground.

When Trump turned the microphone over to Hawley, the candidate complimented the president on the size of the crowd, remarking that “twenty thousand people or something” were turned away. He then ran through the Trump résumé, which all Republican candidates had been citing—new jobs, lower taxes, and a commitment to delivering big for the American people. When Hawley came to Trump’s record of putting “pro-Constitution judges on the bench,” the crowd went wild. Before he could utter Kavanaugh’s name, the crowd yelled it for him, chanting “Ka-va-naugh! Ka-va-naugh!” The applause had roared for about twenty seconds, and Hawley decided against trying to shout over the crowd.

“That’s right, wow,” he said, taking a step back and looking over at Trump. The president responded to the chants with two thumbs up and a couple of fist pumps. “That’s pretty good,” Trump said to Hawley with a look of surprise. Hawley repeated, “That’s pretty good,” cocked his head in astonishment, and searched for his place in the teleprompter. Finding he was mid-sentence, he raised his voice over the crowd: “Judges who love the Constitution, judges who love our country, judges like Brett Kavanaugh,” and the crowd erupted again.

Hawley was happy to tie himself to Kavanaugh, whom he knew personally. They were members of the same caste—graduates of Yale Law School and Supreme Court clerks. After practicing appellate litigation in Washington, D.C., Hawley returned to his home state to teach at the University of Missouri Law School and was elected state attorney general in 2016.

Hawley appreciated the power of Supreme Court appointments to galvanize conservative voters. The issue helped Trump win in 2016, and Hawley took advantage of it in 2018. Soon after Justice Anthony Kennedy retired, he set up the website “supremeclaire.com” to spotlight the differences between the judges he wanted and those McCaskill favored. The message was clear and concise: “McCaskill supported Obama’s judicial nominees, yet obstructs President Trump.” She had voted to confirm 100 percent of President Obama’s judicial nominees but voted against confirming Neil Gorsuch.

McCaskill, however, had gone further than simply voting for all of Obama’s judges and against Trump’s Supreme Court picks. She also opposed federal appellate court nominees who were on Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist or who were likely to be added to it, voting against Amul Thapar and Don Willett and declining to vote on the nominations of Amy Coney Barrett, Joan Larsen, and Allison Eid, who filled Gorsuch’s seat on the Tenth Circuit.

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