Missouri U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley has found himself on the national stage on myriad issues in his first term – most recently dragging a historic apology out of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and waging a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington battle to provide compensation to victims of radioactive waste left over from development of the first atomic bombs.

But this past weekend Hawley and his equally industrious wife Erin took center stage at the Missouri GOP’s “Lincoln Days” celebration at the Kansas City Airport Hilton – with the senator headlining a packed and raucous Friday night dinner, while Erin Morrow Hawley keynoted the Missouri Federation of Republican Women’s luncheon.

As on the Senate Judiciary Committee and national news, Hawley was breathing fire – about the Biden administration’s and so-called uniparty’s failures on the border, Chinese aggression, attacks on domestic energy production, and the various woke ideologies eating away at the country’s foundation.

“We’re led by a man who has absolutely no idea what day of the week it is, where he lives, where he’s going, or what he’s doing,” Hawley told the standing-room-only gathering. “He also happens to be, however, a criminal. This is a guy who, let’s look at the special counsel’s report – what did the guy say? The report said Joe Biden willfully and knowingly kept classified documents over, like, 20 years, and then knowingly and willfully, deliberately released them.

“Now, gee: Joe Biden is not gonna be charged with anything – but I can think of another former president who I know of who is, right now or going to be, on trial for the same thing. Double standard, anybody?

“Even as we stand here and talk, the liberals are doing everything they can to keep Donald Trump off the ballot because they don’t want you and me to have the choice in November.

“2024 is gonna be a year to remember. The decisions we make in the next few months are going to determine whether we have an America in the next few years.”

As a conservative firebrand and former Missouri attorney general whose sharp prosecutorial instincts have led to moments such as Zuckerberg’s deer-in-the-headlights apology to parents whose children have been harmed by Meta social media platforms, Hawley is a favorite target of leftists.

He wears it as a badge of honor.

“Joe Biden can call me anything he wants,” Hawley told the crowd. “He can call me an extremist, he can call me MAGA. I don’t care what he calls me. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what any of the D.C. press call me. I don’t care what my fellow Republicans call me. I didn’t go there to make them happy. I went there to serve you.”

As Hawley heads into what appears to be a smooth re-election campaign with the wind at his back, he cautions his fellow conservatives that “this is the year, above all years, to take a stand for what we believe in – take a stand for our Constitution, take a stand for our history.”

Nonetheless, he sounded more than a few notes of optimism at the event.

“This nation is the greatest in the history of the world because we were founded on the principles of the Bible,” he said, albeit noting liberal attempts to overwhelm the border, overtake parenting and overlook the Creator.

“I think we’re headed for a turn in direction in this country. I think we are headed for a new day in this country, because the American people are getting a good look at what atheistic, socialistic progressivism looks like.

“They’re getting a good look at what hard-left policies for our country look like, and I think they’re saying, ‘We don’t want that. No more, no how.’ And we’re going to have a chance, finally this year, finally this November, after four long years, we’re gonna have the chance to make our voices heard again. And this is the year we have got to stand up to save our country.”

For her part, Erin Hawley – senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom and senior legal fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum – talked about her work at the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade; her other work to defend the unborn; the country’s spiritual warfare; and what she called the left’s war on truth.

The left, she said, is “telling children that boys are girls and girls are boys instead of telling them that they are beautifully and wonderfully created in the very image of God.”

The Hawleys were joined at Lincoln Days by their children, Blaise, Elijiah, Abigail.