Danforth slams Hawley protest: ‘Destructive attack on our constitutional government’
Former Missouri Sen. John Danforth called Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s plan to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s victory a radical and destructive attack on constitutional government.
Danforth, a Republican, represented Missouri from 1976 to 1995 before later serving as President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations.
He has been a vocal GOP critic of President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede. But until this week he had largely been quiet about Hawley’s role in elevating Trump’s baseless claims about the election, which Biden won with 51 % of the popular vote and 306 electoral votes.
Danforth served as the public face of the effort to recruit Hawley to run against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in 2018.
“Citing my support for Josh Hawley’s campaigns, a number of people have asked me to comment on his decision to challenge votes of the electoral college,” Danforth said in a statement Monday.
“Lending credence to Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen is a highly destructive attack on our constitutional government. It is the opposite of conservative; it is radical. As one friend asked me, ‘What are my grandchildren to think of America if they are told that elections are fraudulent?’”
Hawley, a former Missouri attorney general and potential presidential candidate in 2024, was the first U.S. senator to announce that he would object to the certification of Biden’s electors when Congress meets Wednesday to accept the Electoral College results.
“At a time of extreme polarization the populist strategy is to drive America even farther apart by promoting conspiracy theories and stoking grievances. We must reject this strategy and reclaim America’s historic purpose of holding our diverse nation together as one people,” Danforth said.
Hawley did not immediately respond to Danforth’s criticism.
Last week, in announcing his plan to object to the election certification, Hawley cited unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and accused the state of Pennsylvania of failing to adhere to its election laws by extending the deadline for mail-in ballots, an argument that has repeatedly been rejected by federal courts. Hawley also accused social media companies of election interference on Biden’s behalf.
Since Hawley’s announcement, 11 additional Republican senators, including Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall, have signed onto the effort, which will be a symbolic protest.
Neither Hawley nor Marshall immediately commented on Sunday’s revelation that Trump had called Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, to pressure him to find 11,780 additional votes to undo Biden’s victory in the swing state.
Raffensperger rebuffed the unprecedented demand, which legal experts say could warrant criminal prosecution of the outgoing president.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, the senior Democrat in the Missouri delegation, said in a statement that Trump’s attempt “to pressure the Georgia Secretary of State to overturn an election strikes at the very heart of our democracy and the founding principle that We, the People, decide who leads our nation in elected office.”
Cleaver said Biden’s victory has been confirmed decisively by the states and the courts and would be confirmed this week by Congress despite the efforts by Trump and others amplifying conspiracy theories.
“We as a people need to reflect on how we’ve allowed ourselves to travel so far down this dangerous path — where a President feels so confident that he is immune from the law that he brazenly tries to pressure another official to ‘find’ the exact number of votes that would change the outcome of an election,” Cleaver said.
But Cleaver is in the minority in the Kansas City area delegation in holding that position.
Seven GOP lawmakers from Kansas and Missouri say they will support objections to Biden’s victory in the U.S. House: Reps. Vicky Hartzler, Sam Graves, Jason Smith, Billy Long, Ron Estes, Jake LaTurner and Tracey Mann.
Kansas Republicans LaTurner and Mann are newly elected members. The objections stand no chance of success because Democrats control the House.
“It’s still Nancy Pelosi’s House, so the outcome on Wednesday is not a big mystery,” LaTurner acknowledged in a phone call Monday afternoon.
LaTurner said he was joining the objection to highlight what he believes were violations of states’ election laws. He said he did not support Trump’s effort to pressure Georgia election officials.
“Certainly I don’t endorse what President Trump said to the secretary of state in Georgia in terms of finding votes, but that doesn’t change the fact that states didn’t follow their own laws,” LaTurner said.
The measure is also expected to fail in the Senate after multiple Republicans, including Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, have signaled their intent to join Democrats in voting it down.
“I actually like to come up with plans that have a chance of being successful,” Blunt, a member of GOP leadership and former Missouri secretary of state, told reporters Sunday.
The two senators leading the charge to object to Biden’s electoral votes are Hawley and Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who are both considered potential candidates for president in 2024. Their decision to pursue the strategy has largely been seen as an effort to win support from Trump’s base in future elections.
A third potential presidential contender, Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, said he would oppose the measure, arguing that an attempt to contest the Electoral College results would embolden Democratic activists seeking to replace the traditional system with a national popular vote.
Rep. Ann Wagner, a Republican who represents the St. Louis suburbs, made a similar argument when she announced late Monday that she would not join other Republicans from the region in objecting to the Electoral College results.
“I cannot and will not unconstitutionally insert Congress into the Presidential election in this manner. This would amount to stealing power from the People and the States,” Wagner said. “It would, in effect, replace the Electoral College with Congress, and strengthen the efforts of those who are determined to eliminate it or render it irrelevant.”
This story was originally published January 4, 2021 at 12:27 PM with the headline "Danforth slams Hawley protest: ‘Destructive attack on our constitutional government’."
