"For basically my entire adult life, the default mode of Republican speechifying has been a kind of reheated 'optimism' with lots of waxing poetic about the great reserves of American can-do waiting to be tapped. These attempts to recapture 'Morning in America' have been delivered through clenched, Prozac-like smiles by men who promptly enter black SUVs to be hurried off back to their gated communities. I've always accepted that this is the way of electoral politics, which doesn't have much to do with a conservative intellectual disposition that tends to be more dour, or at least skeptical.
"But Hawley's speech went from those baleful statistics to a prophetic critique of a cult of the individual and self that is 'so thoroughly ingrained in American culture.'"
Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review praises a speech by Sen. Josh Hawley.
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