« The Republican Party has lost its way. »
Can we really call it a “civil war” when there are like 12 people on one side and 74 million on the other? For some reason I can’t find an embeddable version of the video Kinzinger posted yesterday to announce his new PAC, “Country First.” (A McCain reference, just to sharpen the contrast with Trump.) You can watch it on their website. I find it less interesting for the content of Kinzinger’s speech, which is verrrry heavy on bromides, than for the mere fact that it exists. There are only three Republicans left in Congress who are unafraid to speak their mind about Trump and Trumpism — Kinzinger, Mitt Romney, and Lisa Murkowski — and Romney and Murkowski have good reason to believe they can survive a primary because of their states’ somewhat unique political cultures. Kinzinger has no such guarantee. Granted, he’s won his House primaries easily in the past, but he knows he’ll be a prime target for MAGAworld in 2022. Liz Cheney might have enough money and establishment connections by dint of her family pedigree that she can survive in Wyoming, but I’m skeptical that Kinzinger can. And yet here he is in full DGAF mode, doing TV interviews regularly about Trump’s pernicious influence on the party and further antagonizing the president’s voters. Now he even has a PAC devoted to the effort. While most other pro-impeachment Republicans are keeping their heads down, he’s waving the red cape in front of the bull. What’s his deal? Is he that much of a boy scout that he feels called to challenge Trump knowing that the effort will almost certainly hurt him more than it hurts MAGA? Is there some “angle” here, in which Kinzinger thinks that the political courage he’s displayed in taking on Trump might actually earn the respect of voters in his district even if they tend to support the president? I doubt there’s any angle. What’s happening lately, I think, is that anti-Trump and Trump-skeptic Republicans are watching the way that two prominent Republican women are being handled by the party and getting angrier by the moment. On the one hand, Liz Cheney has MAGA droogs like Matt Gaetz campaigning against her in her own home state for the sin of having found Trump’s “stop the steal” incitement impeachable, which of course it was.
