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Liberal Cynic's avatar

Yes, and? Why should the Democrats unilaterally disarm themselves? Kinzinger, other than on Jan 6th, is a conservative republican that supports his party's (non)policies.

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Don Gates's avatar

It depends on what you want to prioritize. Yes, Kinzinger is a Republican and votes like one. But policy is secondary to resisting authoritarianism, for me at least, and Illinois Democrats don't seem to be taking the threat seriously when they're lighting allies in the fight on fire. There is an alarming pattern of Republicans who stand up against their party's authoritarian impulses vanishing from the scene, ever since Jeff Flake. When Liz Cheney loses reelection next year, who will be left?

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R Mercer's avatar

If Kinzinger or Cheney were serious about something like voting rights or anti-authoritarianism they could work together to put forward a bill, get a few Democrats to sign onto it. Did they even approach anything like that? Imagine what a coup that would be to get some people in the center to put forward a workable bill.

The only problem is that NONE of these Republicans are remotely in the center or remotely interested in electoral reform or other such issues.

Cheney and Kinzinger are already on the outs, so it isn't like doing something like that would hurt them WRT the GoP much further.

I am not really sure what they are doing, other than simply expressing distaste on a personal level for Trump. They seem to be on board with everything else. Why would Democrats want to keep them around (as others have noted)? No reason to do so.

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Shawn's avatar

This makes a number of assumptions. First, that people like Cheney or Kinzinger have any future in GOP politics. If they require help from the democrats to win, they don't have a future, period. The fact that he's retiring says that he understands this: he can't win against his own party, and his own party would destroy him otherwise. He serves no purpose to anyone.

At this point, he's a gangrenous limb on Trumpism. He's not going to be the thing that defeats it, and he wouldn't be the one to rise after it, anymore than someone like Mitt Romney would. There's no hope in him existing as some kind of 'see what you could be, GOP?'

And the reason for that is GOP voters. GOP voters do not want people like Kinzinger. They see what he's selling, and they've chosen against it. They continue to choose against it. the gop voters themselves would prefer a MTG to a Cheney. They would prefer a Josh Hawley to a Mitt Romney. They prefer Trump to everyone. And why? Because the voters do not care one bit about policies anymore. The GOP voter is not motivated by anything resembling actual policy, because decades of GOP messaging about how government is bad and can do no right have borne fruit.

It turns out that if you tell people government is evil and can't help you, people will stop caring about who is in charge. There's no 'allies' in these dead representatives walking, only the slow inevitable defeat. Either they lose in primaries to Trumpy people, or they are redistricted out of existence. But there is zero chance of doing anything on their own.

And at this point, choosing to support Trumpist policies while saying you don't like him is a false choice. To support such things means you support the man, because helping his policies is the same as helping his reelection.

There is no 'well, I was totally on board with the fascists until they started talking crazy' position that you can take. You can choose to join them, you can choose to join their opponents, but you can't support every part of them and then act like you're not with them. That's an untenable position, because they're not going to care what your policies are if you don't support the leader, and your enemies aren't going to support you for supporting everything they hate.

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Liberal Cynic's avatar

Kinzinger is only an ally on the Jan 6th committee. When it comes to protecting voting rights he is one of the enemies. When it comes to not monkeying around with the nation's debt he is one of the enemies.

I am also old enough to remember that a couple of weeks ago they were talking here about how partied in Europe came together and ignored policy differences in order to beat fascism in their countries. Adam must have missed those articles and podcasts.

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