Hawley is like the only chance the GOP has of becoming the big majoritarian working class party in the next decade that the Trump experiment took a step towards in campaigning and failed miserably in governing. He's the only candidate I'm really excited about in that sense. This is all assuming a Trump loss by the way. If Trump pulls out a win, then the whole working class party thing gets pushed back two decades due to this incompetence and the losses sustained during his reign.
Also, before I explain my reasoning, I want to say that I completely agree with Yankee on everything he said. It's been apparent for a while that the GOP is the party of no ideas and what ideas they do have are pitifully insignificant due to trying to work within the confines of the GOP orthodoxy.
The problem is that as the GOP approaches the 2024 primaries, everyone is going to agree that Trump led a revolution in GOP thinking and every candidate will promise to MAGA. The question is what does that mean. For instance, I really like Nikki Haley and think she's straight up the most electable choice. She has been a great example of a Republican triangulating all the parts of Trumpism with traditional Republican beliefs. But I don't think that's enough for the GOP to move forward. I think she'll be too moderate on economic issues or just be bog standard. Her beliefs are not such that she'll really gravitate to economic policies that actually help the people that are struggling in this country. I feel like Trump, she would pass tax cuts but not family leave or lowering prescription drugs (actual popular policies, I know!). She may win two terms, have high approvals, but does nothing to winning more people to the GOP in a long term way.
Pence is the same issue except even less electable and exciting. He'll be Trumpist on the wall, China, fighting the media, and that'll be it.
I think Cotton is also in the same boat. He's positioned himself as a populist and one most like Trump, but I don't see it at all and I don't think the voters will be fooled either. He's a neocon that wants to build a wall. It genuinely seems the only aspects of Trumpism, which in this case I'll use @krazen1211 and his "definition":
'Trumpism' is the fact that the pre Trump GOP was too eager to invade foreign nations, is far too eager to help rich people and business interests, and doesn't advance the causes of social/cultural conservatism. Take those as vague definitions intentionally.
The only aspects of Trumpism Cotton takes is immigration and being aggressive in attitude. He wouldn't even pull troops out of other theaters. He would accelerate the loss in the suburbs and among college whites without gaining much for the party.
You have guys like Rubio and DeSantis who are more on the right boat, but I don't know how much of a guiding philosophy they have. Rubio especially seems to have made a pragmatic conversion to Trumpism although he genuinely has reform tendencies. I don't think he knows why we need reform or what kind of reform we need beyond vaguely "making things better." DeSantis similiarly feels that way to me but I don't follow him as well. I get a focus group feel from his convictions (aka he has none) considering he went from a Freedom Caucuser to whatever he is now.
And that leaves us with Hawley. He has a philosophy. The man wrote a book on TR from a conservative's perspective which is how Truman has viewed TR. He recognizes how the GOP's policies have failed the very voters it supposedly champions. And he knows that house of cards can't last. Look at how he talks about anti-trusting the big tech companies. He seems like he'd actually want populist economic policies and wouldn't just talk abou them.
And he does all this while being able to verbalize it in a way that doesn't just come off as your boomer uncle like Trump does so I think he could win suburbs and college educated voters as well.
Anyway, that's my rationale behind Hawley, but I can totally see how someone who is very still attached to traditional Republican beliefs would look at the guy and go "what's the big deal?"