WHILE THE IRON IS HOT

United States Senate terms are six years.  Although I don't see anyone among Missouri Democrats plausibly taking him on, Josh Hawley figures that there's no guarantee that he'll win a second term so he might as well make the best possible use of the one he has.

In a ringing 13-minute denunciation of the Supreme Court’s Bostock sex discrimination decision, the youngest man in the U.S. Senate urged America’s religious conservatives to demand a new “bargain” from Republican leaders as a condition for their future support.

“If this case makes anything clear, it is that the bargain that has been offered to religious conservatives for years now is a bad one, it’s time to reject it,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) declared on the Senate floor June 16.

If the current bargain is bad, what makes Hawley think that a new one would be any better?

“The bargain has never been explicitly articulated, but religious conservatives know what it is,” Hawley said. “The bargain is you go along with the party establishment, you support their policies and priorities, or just keep your mouth shut about it, and in return, the establishment will put some judges on the bench who supposedly will protect your constitutional rights to freedom of worship, to freedom of exercise.

True.

“That’s what we’ve been told for years now, and we were told that we’re supposed to shut up while the party establishment focuses more on cutting taxes and handing out favors for corporations, multinational corporations who don’t share our values, who will not stand up for American principles, who are only too happy to ship American jobs overseas,” he continued.

“But we’re supposed to say nothing about that, we’re supposed to keep our mouths shut, because maybe, we’ll get a judge out of the deal,” he said.

There's nothing arguable about any of that.  But if the Trump presidency has taught us anything, it is that the era of "bargains" and "deals" is over.  Not to go all Missourian on you or anything but don't waste my time telling me about what you claim is your "bedrock principle."

Show me.  Or shut the hell up.