Adam Kinzinger's SuperPAC to Hang Out if You Ever Want to Rap or Just Get Weird With Somebody

They're never gonna let me join dressed like this.

Float with me now down a lazy, meandering mental stream, enjoying a hilariously fizzy, empty conversation between The Bulwark founder Charlie Sykes and Political Flavor of the Month Adam Kinzinger about how humans need to evolve past mundanities like political alignments and math and cause-and-effect and instead live together harmoniously in a pearly, undifferentiated cloud of goodfeelings about Freedom and Country where all are unburdened by "issues" or "policies" or "beliefs" and instead can glide on over to Adam Kinzinger's newly constituted political action committee (but... but... I though we were transcending politics?) and sign up for...well...something.

Kinzinger:  I created the video, which was the first video we put up, and decided to start a movement with it.

Wow.  I did not know that starting a "movement" was as easy as that.  Especially a "movement" that is utterly undistinguishable from every other moonshine peddling Third Way/ Purple Pac/ No Labels/ Problem Solvers "movement" of Conservatives-Who-Would-Really-Rather-Not-Talk-About-Conservatism that have been working that same corner for years.

But please, do go on.  I understand that operators are standing by!

Kinzinger:  ...and it's got the two videos...

No need to shove, people.  There are two videos!  Two.  So no waiting.

Kinzinger:  ...including the one at least two days ago about fear.

That fear dollar is a good dollar.

Kinzinger:  But the bottom line is, in 24 hours we had 20 000 email addresses of people that said, "Sign me up!"  The fundraising's been huge for the leadership PAC --  part of that... the part that I can control -- and and it's not my intention... is not to go out and use it as just a fundraising it's to build and endorse and support through grassroots a network of candidates that put country first.

Congratulations congressperson Kinzinger!  You have just described the Democratic Party.  So...why shouldn't people just join the Democratic Party?

Kinzinger:  It's a low bar, Charlie.  

Sounds like it's an open bar, Charlie.

Kinzinger: I... I don't... I don't have a litmus test for anything you believe except to say you're going to tell the truth not peddle and fear unnecessarily and put the country before the party.

So you're PAC doesn't actually stand for, well, anything.  It just a place to hang out if you ever want to rap or just get weird with somebody... You know... buddies.

Kinzinger:  It's a low bar...

I don't know why you think this is a selling point.  Maybe if your Republican Party had had a slightly higher bar than "Can fog a mirror, listens to Limbaugh, hates Libtards" it wouldn't be irretrievably fucked-in-the-head.

Kinzinger:  ...but I think it eliminates you know 80 percent of people.

"You know who else created a superpac with no litmus test that eliminated 80% of people?" -- Youth Pastor

So there I was, working my way through various household chores, listening to this amusingly vacuous exchange about Adam Kinzingers' Big Rock Candy Mountains PAC ...

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

All the cops have wooden legs

And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth

And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs...

... when suddenly Charlie Sykes got very wound up and came after...well...us.

Sykes:  I make this point to folks on the Left...

Really?  Who?  Which "folks on the Left" are you regularly crossing swords with, Charlie?  Because it sure seems that your go-to move is to hide from any "folks on the Left" who might push back on this aggrieved whining which is now a feature in virtually every episode of your podcast.

Sykes:  that... that it is perhaps not reasonable to assume that... that simply because a Conservative says that Donald Trump defies Conservative principles and is a danger to the country that therefore, um, I am now going to become a Liberal or that I am now going to become a Democrat.  No no no.  The whole point of Conservatives opposing Trump is because they see Trump as a danger to the values that they held into the country which, again, putting country before ideology or party.  

Really, Charlie?   Exactly what "values" would those be?  Or, to be more accurate, what cherished and uniquely Conservative values are those mean, old Liberals demanding that you set aside?  Sweeping tax cuts for the rich?  Union busting?   Trying to kill Obamacare?  Voter suppression?  Impeaching Democrats over trivia and letting Republicans slide?  All of that racism and bile I've heard vomiting out of Conservative Hate Radio Lying for the past 30 years?  Lying us into the wrong war?  Fucking that war up?  Blowing through the Clinton budget surplus and right back into record deficits?  Giving Christopath monsters like Falwell and Robertson a seat at this table?  Trying to kill Medicare and Medicaid?   Trying to gut Social Security?  Hating the Left?  

Because none of those are values, Charlie.  Those are the policies and tactics by which you Conservatives have been manifesting your values for my entire adult life.  And since those the policies and tactics have been uniformly cruel and stupid and destructive and wrong, why the hell would you continue to revere the values that drove those  policies and tactics?

Sykes:  But there is that demand that that every once in a while will come up saying, y'know, [in scary, accusing voice] "We don't want you unless you are willing to confess all of your sins and reject everything that you have believed until now with the exception of the Donald Trump stuff!!!"

So Conservatives like you spent decades wrecking the country and creating a Republican doomsday machine with no "off" switch.  And now that that doomsday machine has run out of your control, you think it is mean and unfair that the people you spent decades ignoring, reviling and generally fucking over don't trust you because you won't deal on the square with the fact that You.  Built.  This.

Wow.  Is weaseling out of taking ownership of what you have wrought one of those Conservative values one hears so much about?  Is getting pissed of at the people you have damaged for asking that acknowledging the damage you have done?  For insisting that you take a hard fucking look -- a searching and fearless moral inventory, if you will -- at the appalling, real-world consequence of those cherished values of yours.

And of course what would a Conservative coffee klatch be without a side of Both Sides Do It. 

Kinzinger:  Yeah, and that's where that's where the tribalism accelerates not just on the Right but on the Left.

They're never gonna let me join.  

No Half Measures