What’s happened to cause Sen. Josh Hawley’s U-turn on Ukraine?

Darrell Todd Maurina
4 min readMar 4, 2023

What’s happened with our Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Ukraine? A year ago, he was saying “the most important thing we can do” was to arm the Ukrainians resisting Russian attacks. Today, he’s saying this: “The truth is that Joe Biden, and, let’s face it, congressional Republicans, have spent over $100 billion and counting on the Ukraine war, and meanwhile the folks in East Palestine, Ohio, have poison in the water, poison in the air… I would just say to Republicans: You can either be the party of Ukraine and the globalists or you can be the party of East Palestine and the working people of this country.”

It’s easy to do what George F. Will and others are doing by attacking Josh Hawley for being a “human windsock,” in other words, being blown by the wind of public opinion. It’s harder to take the time to listen to what he’s actually saying and why he’s changed. John McCormack of National Review has done that, and also interviewed other hard-right conservatives such as Senator Ted Cruz who haven’t made the same switch.

Here’s a link to John McCormack’s National Review article:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/03/josh-hawleys-u-turn-on-military-aid-to-ukraine/

And here’s George F. Will’s criticism of Hawley: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/22/ukraine-war-isolationists-hawley-republicans/

I’m frankly not sure what to make of Hawley’s position.

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