Missouri congressman Josh Hawley is presenting his GOP congressional colleagues with what he positions as a stark choice. The Hawley binary, he tells Tucker Carlson, is between supporting Ukraine and supporting people in Ohio affected by the tragic toxic train derailment there.
My message to congressional Republicans: you can either be the party of Ukraine & the globalists or you can be the party of East Palestine & the working people of America
Josh Hawley (R-MO)
Even many of his fellow Republicans are reluctant to embrace this reductive either-or choice as Hawley presents it — why else would Hawley have to go on Carlson‘s show to demand GOP members declare a side?
But if Hawley has Republican representatives balking at his notion, many on the political left are enraged by the way Hawley presents what they believe is a disingenuous choice fueled by political optics, not real world considerations.
Tom Nichols, a retired professor at the U.S. Naval War College and lapsed Republican, encapsulates the left’s rage against Hawley’s posturing with his comment: “You sad, pathetic little men.” Another responds to Hawley, who is said to have presidential ambitions, that “it’s going to be hard for you to be president if you can’t manage domestic and foreign affairs simultaneously.”
You sad, pathetic little men. https://t.co/NbZh0Vt23X
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 25, 2023
Albert Einstein famously said that things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
In politics, it’s often the opposite: to feed a base of supporters — a political necessity — politicians create oversimplified binary choices — us against them — even if it’s a false dilemma or falsedichotomy. It has proven over time to be an effective way to rally support, even if the oversimplification does more harm than good. (No simpler, said the genius.)
[False Dilemma Fallacy: “Sometimes called the ‘either-or’ fallacy, a false dilemma is a logical fallacy that presents only two options or sides when there are many options or sides.”]
Is there an excellent chance that Hawley understands geopolitics better than he lets on? And that — as a graduate of the super elite Stanford University and the super elite Yale University Law School — Hawley knows that Ukraine’s fight and the related freedom of Western Europe has an impact on US security? Hawley sits on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Does Hawley also know that much of the funding for Ukraine ends up in the bank accounts of major US technology and weapons manufacturers? It goes unmentioned.
Senate Republican Mitt Romney‘s position underscores the schism in the GOP that Hawley hopes to challenge by baiting colleagues with his “either-or” binary. Romney has said unequivocally: “It is in America’s interest to support Ukraine. If Russia can invade, subjugate, and pillage Ukraine with impunity, it will do the same again to others, and a world at war diminishes the security of Americans.”
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