Republicans should support Rep. Kinzinger's Country First movement

Are you a Republican or a conservative-leaning independent?

If so, are you fed up with how the GOP has become so closely tied to Trump, it has lost its way to such an extent it now embraces crazy conspiracy theories such as that Biden's victory didn't happen via a free and fair election?

A "yes" answer, or even a "maybe," should cause you to check out Representative Adam Kinzinger's newly unveiled web site, Country First. 

Kinzinger is an Illinois Congressman who was one of ten Republicans to vote for Trump's impeachment in the House of Representatives. I've seen him several times on TV, including his appearance today on Meet The Press.

I like his style. Kinzinger comes across as straightforward, honest, and committed to traditional Republican principles.

He's deeply disturbed by what the Republican Party has become in its seemingly never-ending quest to kiss up to Donald Trump, no matter how far this misplaced affection causes the GOP to stray from the values it used to hold.

There's a six-minute video on Country First that explains why Kinzinger is starting this counterweight to Trumpism. Time will tell whether many conservatives jump on board the Country First movement.

I suspect most Republicans will stick with Trump, but I admire Kinzinger for trying to get the GOP back on track.

My mother was a fervent lifelong Republican who would be aghast at how deep the party has sunk into the muck of lies, sedition, and loyalty to an ex-president who richly deserves his two impeachments.

I haven't leaned Republican since I went to college and left behind the conservatism that my highly political mother imbued in me. However, I'm supporting what Kinzinger is doing because it isn't healthy for our country to have a major political party dominated by, to put it bluntly, crazy people. 

The United States is the only advanced democracy where one party has become so extreme, basically there is no way for the Democratic Party to engage with it on pressing policy issues like Covid relief, voting rights, and climate change. That's an unhealthy state of affairs.

Here's excerpts from a Washington Post story, "GOP Rep. Kinzinger starts PAC to challenge party's embrace of Trump." 

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), one of 10 Republicans to vote to impeach Donald Trump earlier this month, has launched a new political action committee that is designed to become a financial engine to challenge the former president’s wing of the GOP caucus and stand up against a leadership team still aligned with him.

Kinzinger, 42, a former star of the 2010 tea party class, said the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol served as a final breaking point for the direction of the Republican Party, providing a stark divide between those who want to continue a path toward autocracy and those who want to return to traditional conservative values.

In an interview Sunday on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” Kinzinger formally unveiled his Country 1st PAC and a six-minute campaign-style video launching what he hopes will become a movement.

“The reality is this: This is a time to choose. . . . And my goal in launching Country1st.com. . . is just to say, ‘Look, let’s take a look at the last four years, how far we have come in a bad way, how backwards-looking we are, how much we peddle darkness and division,’ ” Kinzinger said on the program. “And that’s not the party I ever signed up for. And I think most Republicans didn’t sign up for that.”

...Kinzinger said he does not want to play any leading role in the GOP and has no ambition to run for higher office, but said too many Republicans were remaining quiet and just hoping Trumpism would fade away without being fully confronted.

He said that his push is not really about ideology so much as driving conspiracy theorists and racists out of the GOP.

“We don’t embrace conspiracy theories to win anymore,” he said. “Would we lose the Proud Boys? Maybe. I’m fine with that.”

Comments

[Kurt]

Kinzinger was a "former star of the 2010 tea party class" (the party of Marco Rubio and Rand Paul). While so called fiscal conservatism sounds goods (especially now), it is really just a means to maintain economic and racial disparity.

In 2009, a commentator provided a catalyst for the populist sentiment by calling potential beneficiaries of Obama's proposed bailout of under water mortgagees "losers".

While Kinzinger may be a lesser of evils, what he is selling is really just a more palatable form of evil.