“I feel very responsible for Josh Hawley being in the Senate. I feel terrible about it."

Now, former friends and supporters — a middle school classmate, a law school professor, a conservative columnist who promoted him and the Republican stalwart who recruited him to run for the Senate — say they are shocked that he has become a different politician than they expected, describing themselves as victims of political deception and personal betrayal. “I feel very responsible for Josh Hawley being in the Senate. I feel terrible about it,” said former senator John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), who recently called his encouragement of Hawley’s Senate run the “greatest mistake of my life.” He added, “Josh Hawley played a central role in creating if not the darkest day in American history, one of the darkest days in American history.”... This was too much for his onetime hero, George Will, who viewed individual liberty as an essential American trait. Will had been helpful during the Senate campaign. He had been urged to write about Hawley by Danforth, his longtime friend and the godfather of Will’s daughter. Will came to Missouri, rode with Hawley on a campaign bus and wrote a column praising the candidate as “an actual, not a pretend, conservative.” But Will gradually concluded that his assessment had been wrong. He wrote a column in January 2020 ridiculing Hawley’s attack on individualism. As the two feuded, the senator fired off a Trump-like tweet at the man he once revered: “I’m told NeverTrumper and ex-Republican George Will attacking me again today for talking about working people. Oh George. Don’t you have a country club to go to?”