Adam Kinzinger Is Definitely Running For President Of David Brooks' Imaginary Whig Party

As longtime readers know, Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times has spent his entire career meticulously constructing an imaginary world in which he can boast incessantly about the bright past, noble present and limitless future of his imaginary Republican Party.  Specifically...

..that Mr. Brooks is engaged in a long-term project to completely rewrite the history of American Conservatism: to flense it of all of the Conservative social, political  economic and foreign policy debacles that make Mr. Brooks wince and repackage the whole era as a fairy tale of noble Whigs being led through treacherous hippie country by the humble David Brooks.

And odds are he'll get away with it too.

And by no means has Mr. Brooks been floating there alone in his pocket Whig universe like Kirk in The Tholian Web.  Not at all.  In fact, after the implosion of the Previous Catastrophically-Failed Republican President Whose Name Must Never Be Spoke, pretty much every Respectable Republican of the First Water and every Beltway pundit and every mainstream media publication and every American citizen too damnfool or gutless to see what was happening to the GOP crammed in there with him.

Unfortunately for Mr. Brooks and his fellow Whigonauts, he didn't make his Whig Fan Fiction Universe expansive and forgiving enough to allow for any new angles or plot twists.  Instead, Mr. Brooks built his fairy tale as a tiny ship in a tiny bottle -- built it on the single premise that this country is on a long, sad road to Hell because it is not governed by Republicans like Mr. David Brooks.

But of course, if history has proven one political fact beyond dispute it's that this country is on a long, sad road to Hell precisely because of Mr. Brooks' Republican Party.  Every time Mr. Brooks' Republican Party has gotten their filthy little paws on the levers of power they immediately fucked everything they touch to death.  And every time power has been pried out of their filthy little paws they've immediately regrouped, rebranded, and begun sabotaging every effort to clean up the staggering ruin and misery they left in their wake.

Of course in any halfway sane country the arrival of Donald Trump would have been seen for exactly what it was: the apotheosis of the decades-long Republican project to create a 100% reprogrammable voting base of fact-averse, rage-drunk bigots and imbeciles.  But while Trump was, beyond any doubt, the Day-Glo orange fulfillment of every dire Liberal warning about the trajectory of the GOP which the Brain Caste of the Republican Party and the mainstream media blithely mocked and ignored, we do not live in a halfway sane country.  

Instead we live in a country where it is clearly of paramount importance to our national sense of smug self-righteousness  and our corporate media that Respectable Republicans of the First Water and every Beltway pundit and every mainstream media publication and every American citizen who was too damnfool or gutless to see what was happening to the GOP be collectively exempted from acknowledging in any way that they were wrong about anything.

That's why there is such a massive and coordinated campaign to declare the Trump Administration sui generis.  A sudden and inexplicable political Tunguska meteor -- destructive, yes, but which no one could have seen coming and with no antecedent roots in the Republican Party.  And if you look and listen carefully, you will find the vocabulary of this revisionist campaign everywhere.  

Trump was not a "real Republican".

The "real" Republican Party is the party of Reagan.  Of principles and patriotism and the flag!

The problems with the Republican Party began "fours years ago" or "in these past few years".

And Liberals are pretty awful too, so best not listen to them and their crazy talk.

Which is why I'm 90% certain that Adam Kinzinger is running to lead David Brooks' Imaginary Whig Party.  Because Congressman Kinzinger has a new PAC called Country & Western,  Flavor Country, Outlaw Country! Country First, and brothers and sister, you can bet that every time he lands in front of a microphone he hits every single verse from the Revisionist Hymnal.  If you're interested there is a ton of this stuff out there.  For now, here are two representative samples. 

Kinzinger from here:

Think back to the days of Ronald Reagan...

Yet we've seen over the last four years...

This is not the party I joined.  This is not the party, y'know, that... that really is for Conservative principles...

All these trends are the arc of history... recent in the Republican Party. Uh Donald Trump was president for four years and I think y'know...

And from here:

This is no time for silence.  Not after the last month.  Not after the past few years.  

Someone needs to tell the truth.  Someone needs to say what history needs to hear.

The Republican Party has lost it's way.

...remember who we are...

...remember what we believe and why we believe it...

...the time has come to choose what kind of Party we will be...

...[the Republican Party's] unapologetic stand for freedom and the flag!

Today's Republican Party is not the one I joined.  The GOP I signed up for was built on a foundation of principle and filled with hope.

But in recent years we've forgotten our principles...

Then comes a lot of garment-rendering about how all that good Republican stuff has been replaced with conspiracies and lies!

Then comes my favorite line of all -- the mandatory slagging of the only people who have been right about the Right all along.

Will we join the Left to take America backwards, or will this Republican Party lead America forward and upward?

Then some more cheerleading for David Brooks' Imaginary Whig Party

We're the party that ended slavery!  Got women the vote!  Won the war against Communist tyrant!

The foundation of the Republican Party is as strong as ever!

The Republican Party was made for this challenge!  Once again we have been called by history.

There was more like that and then he wrapped up.

So what should you take from this?

That we're still in the thick of a decades-long, full-scale war over who gets to control the future by controlling the past.

And that, in case you haven't noticed, we're losing.  

No Half Measures