Josh Hawley, the consummate cynical insider turned insurrectionist, has thrown in his lot with the Putin-loving minority in the GOP. He alone voted against adding Finland and Sweden to NATO in the Senate. His vote sets him apart from the majority of his party, and the other non-Trump candidates for president in either 2024 or 2028, which clearly was the point.
Hawley is making the same bet that Putin is–that the American public will get tired of the economic costs of the war at some point and will turn on the politicians who supported Ukraine. The odds don’t favor him as of today, but what does he have to lose? The establishment in his party doesn’t like him, anyway.
Think of this vote as the right-wing equivalent of Obama’s position on the Iraq war, except Obama was speaking out of conviction, not ambition, and was correct about the war. There is no good case against Finland and Sweden in NATO.