Why Did Adam Kinzinger Cut and Run?

If you've only seen/heard heroic, 30 second clips of Adam Kinzinger's farewell speech to congress delivered to an empty House, you may be surprised to learn that, after scolding Republicans as democracy-hating scum, he made a hard pivot into Both Siderist claptrap.

Of course, if you are even passing familiar with the real Kinzinger, you won't be surprised at all.  

Behold.

To my Democratic colleagues, you must too bear the burden of our failures.

Yes, Resistance Hero Adam really said that.

And why must Democrats bear the burden of the complete collapse of Kinzinger's Republican party under the weight of its own rage, racism and paranoia?  

Because Democrats did-- gasp! -- politics to win elections in 2022.

Many of you have asked me, "Where are all the good Republicans?" 

There are no good Republicans, but sure, please proceed.

Over the past two years, Democratic leadership had the opportunity to stand above the fray. 

Yes, Resistance Hero Adam is actually white-hot pissed that Democrats...worked to get Democrats elected.  

Instead they poured millions of dollars in the campaigns of MAGA Republicans -- the same candidates President Biden called a threat -- to ensure these good Republicans did not make it out of their respective primaries. 

I've already written about this extensively here and here so go there if you want the full rundown.  The short version is that Kinzinger is parroting the same hysterical and thoroughly debunked Beltway freakout over a tiny number of Democrats running ads in Republican primaries which caused an epidemic of pundit fainting couch injuries last Fall.  In fact, in the 13 Republican primaries where Democrats spent money (not 30 or 300, just 13 out of hundreds) Dems did nothing more that honestly state the wingnut's record, followed by some variation of the tag line "This wingnut is too conservative for our state".  

That's it.  That's all   Nobody put a gun to heads of Republican voter.  No Democrat bamboozled them.  Democrats did nothing more than make it clear just how extreme these nutjobs were, and in six of the 13 primaries where Democrats spend money, the nutjob won.  Which I'm sure was terribly embarrassing to goofs like Kinzinger who desperately want to the public to believe that Republican voters aren't really all racist shitbags..  

But they are, Adam.  They really are.  The vast majority of them, anyway.  

And you know what?  In all six cases where Democrats spent money in the Republican primary and the nutjob won, the Democrat kicked that nutjob's ass in the general election.  

Or, to put it another way, Democratic campaign  professionals took the threat posed by Kinzinger's Republican party seriously, sized up the battlefield, calculated the strategy most likely to succeed in getting Democrats elected in several tough races, executed that strategy, and they won, Adam.  They fucking won.  

The Red Wave was stopped, which all the Resistance heroes of my acquaintance celebrated.

But not Kinzinger.  

Instead:

This is not longer politics as usual [any longer].  This is not a game. If you keep stoking the fire, you can't point the finger when our Great Experiment goes up in flames.

Democrats figured out how to win races they might otherwise have lost if they had "stayed above the fray" and this whiny loser is bitching about it on his way out the door.

About which, more later.  

Kinzinger continues:

Unfortunately, there are too few Republicans and Democrats that have the spines to stand up and put Country over [a] Party. 

Plain and simple, Kinzinger is still furious that he got redistricted.  By "country over party" Kinzinger really means that Democrats should've laid off the tiny handful of "good Republicans" like him.  That somehow, Democrats are not only responsible for fixing his irredeemably fucked up party, but the way to do that is to [checks notes] deliberately lose more races.

Except getting redistricted doesn't equal forced retirement.  There was absolutely nothing stopping Kinzinger from running in his new district, but instead he chose to quit, and pout and whine about Democrats.

About which more later.

This is not how are Founding Fathers intended because, Mr. Speaker, our democracy is not functioning. 

Damn right it's not functioning, because Adam Kinzinger's party broke it. 

When one party's megaphone echoes calls for civil war and the other tacitly, and in some cases openly, supports it, we are clearly lost, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, Resistance Hero Adam Kinzinger really did "Both Sides" calls for civil war.  Betcha didn't hear that on your nightly news.  

Much like the Titanic on its maiden voyage,  if Republicans and Democrats don’t urgently course correct, I fear we will hit the iceberg right in front of us. 

And so on.  And so forth.  Like pretty much every other Never Trumper. Kinzinger cannot face the fact that Trump was the iceberg and that for +40 years his fucking party has steered us straight for it every time they grabbed the wheel.  

Instead, it's Both Sides... Both Sides... Both Sides... .

And what makes this especially nauseating is that Kinzinger was handed a chance to actually walk all his bold talk earlier this year when he was redistricted.  Handed on a silver platter.  Because for the benefit of you who are new to the world of politics, "redistricting"  didn't actually erase Kinzinger from existence like the Star Trek, Mirror/Mirror Tantalus zappy thingie.

He was simply nudged into an adjacent district.

A district represented by a Republican named Darin LaHood, Jr; a go-along-to-get-along, second generation Republican (his daddy, Ray LaHood, was a long-serving and influential Illinois politician who served in the Illinois House of Representatives for a year, the United States House of Representatives for 14 years and was President Barack Obama's States Secretary of Transportation for four years.)   LaHood is also a Trump cheerleader who not only refused to vote to impeach Trump but wrote this on the occasion of Senate Republicans refusing to step up and remove him after the January 6th insurrection.

"I applaud the Senate for acting swiftly to acquit President Trump on the weakest and most partisan impeachment charges in our nation’s history. As I’ve said throughout this process, impeachment is the nuclear option, reserved for the most treasonous activity, and House Democrats failed to present evidence that supported the high threshold and requirements needed for removal.

...

It’s time to move on. For three years, Democrats obsessed over the results of the 2016 election, wasting taxpayer money and time in their efforts to impeach and remove President Trump."

LaHood also joined other House Republicans by signing onto the failed Texas amicus brief that attempted to overturn the results of the presidential election and he refused to support of the bipartisan commission proposal to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Kinzinger had previous claimed that he had gotten into congress ten years ago by winning a tough "brother against brother" Republican primary and never wanted to do that again, which is why he opted to retire.  But anyone with the political instinct of a meercat can smell that bullshit a mile away.

LaHood is the embodiment of everything Kinzinger claims is rotten and broken in the Republican party.  So if Kinzinger was so all-fired up about carrying the flaming sword of St. Reagan before him and purging his party of scumbags, why the hell didn't he start in the district where he lived? 

When the opportunity to clean up his own corner of the GOP, why did he cut and run?  Why didn't he man up and campaign as a reformer who wanted to sweep men like LaHood out of the Party of Lincoln?   

After all, he had the money.  He has a huge national media profile -- orders of magnitude bigger that LaHood and that virtually every other congressperson  .  Liz Cheney ran as an explicitly anti-Trump candidate, knives out, knowing she would almost certainly lose, so why didn't Kinzinger?

Well, two reasons.

First,  there would have been no way for Kinzinger to preserve his future political viability in Illinois if he ran against the scion of a powerful and prominent Illinois political family.  Especially if he'd run against LaHood the way Cheney ran against Harriet Hageman.

Second, and relatedly, Kinzinger would've gotten his ass kicked around the block and back again and he damn well knew it.  The Illinois 18th is an 89% white, Republican +15 district which LaHood won with 70% of the vote.  The simple, irreducible fact it, that district is wall-to-wall with the kind of Trump-loving, democracy-hating Republican meatheads that Kinzinger would very much rather not talk about.  And running in that district as a Trump-impeaching January 6th committee member against exactly the kind of politician Kinzinger claims is ruining his party would have not only been futile, but would have made enemies of the godfathers of Illinois Republican politics whose largess Kinzinger is going to need someday.  

So much easier and safer to maintain the cowardly Beltway Both Siderist fence-straddling stance that Kinzinger has been locked into during his entire career in politics.   

You mean you didn't know that the K-man has been a Both Sides Do It goof since way back?  You didn't know he rode into congress on that Obama the Kenyan Usurper/Obamacare is Communism, teabagger wave in 2010?  

Oh you poor kid, do I have some heartbreak for you. 

Here is Kinzinger back in 2014:

"There's an entire industry in Washington that makes money on conflict," says Republican Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. "Some of these outside groups—you know, your Club for Growth types, and your Heritage Action, and your FreedomWorks—they go out and they fundraise by saying that Republicans aren't sufficiently conservative. Or they pick an issue to go to war on because they can stir the base and raise money on it and pay their big salaries. And what that does in the long run is it takes what would be a solid Republican agenda and causes chaos. And they do the same thing on the Democrat side, you know? If Democrats want to reach out and work with Republicans, you have these groups that will stir the base...

And here he is seven years later,  launching his own boutique, Third Way Super PAC "movement" grift by continuing to hype an imaginary glorious Republican party that's waiting just around the corner --

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.

-- and warning Republicans not to become awful like, y'know, those vile Democrats!

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

And Kinzinger has found no shortage of shoulders to cry on about how awful the Left and the Right are.  Here's one such occasion when he and Charlie Sykes sat right down and had a good cry over, y'know, the terrible, terrible tribalism on the Left and on the Right.

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

Kinzinger was given the perfect opportunity to, as Jimmy Cagney once said, plant his feet and tell the truth. Big spotlight and guaranteed national coverage.  

Instead he punked out and used his last address to congress to burnish his a bullshit Beltway Both Siderist resume and slip it through the mail slots of MSNBC and CNN.  

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