Josh Hawley Ripped by Fellow GOP Senator Over Plan to Delay Election Certification

In what could be described as yet another symptom of the trouble that the GOP will face in 2021, two Republican Senators are very publicly not seeing eye to eye on a major, upcoming issue.

On January 6th, Congress is tasked with certifying the results of the 2020 election, which is normally a fairly routine endeavor.  But, as with anything in 2020, there’ll be nothing routine about it this go-round as Senator Josh Hawley has already insisted that he will be contesting the results, forcing Congress into a joint session and debate.

Fellow Republican Ben Sasses is not happy about it.

GOP Sen. Ben Sasse wrote on Facebook Wednesday night that he has been urging his Republican colleagues to “reject” objecting the certification process of the Electoral College and President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, adding that talk of objecting the process is a “dangerous ploy.”

“Having been in private conversation with two dozen of my colleagues over the past few weeks, it seems useful to explain in public why I will not be participating in a project to overturn the election — and why I have been urging my colleagues also to reject this dangerous ploy,” Sasse, the Republican senator from Nebraska, wrote in a six-part Facebook status late Wednesday night.

He added: “The president and his allies are playing with fire. They have been asking — first the courts, then state legislatures, now the Congress — to overturn the results of a presidential election. They have unsuccessfully called on judges and are now calling on federal officeholders to invalidate millions and millions of votes. If you make big claims, you had better have the evidence. But the president doesn’t and neither do the institutional arsonist members of Congress who will object to the Electoral College vote.”

Sasse has been a fairly vocal critic of President Trump in the past, and Senator Hawley’s objection may were well end up a symbolic gesture only.

In either case, the rift between the two belies a serious cleaving within the Republican Party, as the MAGA wing looks to exert their political might in what could be the waning days of the Trump presidency.