Breaking Update:
Rep. Adam Kinzinger was the first of 11 Republican House members to vote with Democrats to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments.
UPDATE:
Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R. Ill.) continues to be all-in, a “one-man resistance,” against the “ruling Trumpists” in his own party, “has launched the most full-throated Republican challenge to populism.”
The piece below describes his most recent efforts to “unplug the outrage machine, reject the politics of personality, and cast aside the conspiracy theories and the rage.”
It does not come without personal risk and risk to his political career.
While Kinzinger may not be a “hero” in the strictest sense of the word, he is certainly a “political hero” – certainly has courage.
“Lexington” at the Economist, in The Courage of Adam Kinzinger, explains what Kinzinger is up against, “hardly a front-rank leader and pretty much out on his own”:
[Kinzinger] has probably already guaranteed himself a primary challenge. But so what? he says, before pausing, gunslinger-style, to spit a glob of tobacco into an empty cola bottle. There are worse things than political failure—a truth he says he learned fighting in Iraq. “And it’s not like all I ever wanted to be was a congressman.”
Should things not work out, Lexington observes that Kinzinger “will have been a good advertisement for heroic failure if so. Unlike his Trump-beaten colleagues, with their telltale aggressive defensiveness, [Kinzinger] exudes contentment…”
Referring to John F Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage,” Lexington concludes:
Kennedy’s exemplars must have felt a similar satisfaction in their noble, mostly failed, undertakings to limit the spread of slavery, prevent the civil war and so forth. They were also immortalised for them. That is another consolation Mr. Kinzinger might hope for, as he takes his slingshot to the Goliath of Mar-a-Lago.
Original Post:
“The party that always spoke about a brighter tomorrow no longer does. It talks about a dark future instead. Hope has given way to fear. Outrage has replaced opportunity…” —— Representative Adam Kinzinger
A little more than a month ago, on December 27, 2020, I watched Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger on CNN’s State of the Union once again stand up to the then-President of the United Sates, the head of his party and his commander in chief. (An Air Force veteran, Kinzinger is currently a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard.)
Kinzinger was expressing his concern about the irresponsible, dangerous talk of violence, martial law and the trampling of the Constitution fomented by the so-called leader of the free world.
Please note the date: December 27, 2020 — 10 days before January 6, 2021, that other date in our history that has already gone down in infamy.
Just the day before — On December 26 — Kinzinger had tweeted, “My God. Trying to burn the place down on the way out because you can’t handle losing. No evidence, nothing but your temper tantrum and crazy conspiracies. Embarrassing.”
In “The State of Our Union,” I wrote at the time how I turned to my wife and said, “Now, there is a true American hero.”
My wife agreed and disagreed. “He is no hero. He is just showing some spine, speaking truth to power…something every Republican legislator should have been doing for the past four years,” she said.
Since then, Kinzinger, has continued to show plenty of spine and heroism.
Just one day after the storming of the U.S. Capitol, Kinzinger called for Trump’s removal from office under the 25th Amendment, saying Trump had “abdicated his duty to protect the American people and the people’s house,” that he had become “unmoored, not just from his duty, but from reality itself.”
Subsequently, after asking, “If these actions–the Article II branch inciting a deadly insurrection against the Article I branch–are not worthy of impeachment, then what is an impeachable offense?” Kinzinger joined nine other Republicans in voting to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection.”
Now, the six-term congressman has had enough. He wants his party and his country back.
On Sunday he announced a fresh offensive via his new “Country First” Political Action Committee (PAC), saying “this is no time for silence. Not after the last month. Not after the last few years. Someone needs to tell the truth.”
On NBC’s Meet the Press, Kinzinger stated his PAC’s goal is to “take a look at the last four years, how far we have come in a bad way…How backward-looking we are, how much we peddle darkness and division…”
Specifically, about January 6, Kinzinger says in his six-minute video announcing the “Country First” PAC:
I was there when shots rang out …when people died. Sadly, I wasn’t surprised because I have been watching the rhetoric leading up to that day and took it seriously. It is the sort of thing that happens in a failed nation, or a banana republic, not the greatest nation the world has ever known. But it did happen right here and our country will never be the same…
About his party:
The party that always spoke about a brighter tomorrow no longer does. It talks about a dark future instead. Hope has given way to fear. Outrage has replaced opportunity. And worst of all, our deep convictions are ignored. They’ve been replaced by poisonous conspiracies and lies. This is not the Republican road and now we know exactly where new and dangerous road leads. It leads to insurrection and an armed attack on the Capitol…
At the end of his video message, Kinzinger asks Republicans and Americans to join him to “take back our party….build up our country.”
“It’ll mean we have to do some difficult things, but after all, history is highlighted by times like these, and we have yet to fail. We won’t fail now. So let’s do this together,” Kinzinger concludes.
Please watch the video below:
Speaking his conscience has been costly for the 42-year-old Illinois congressman. He has been ostracized by many of his colleagues. Some Republicans are promising to “primary” him in 2022. He has received abundant hate mail—even from family members denouncing him, accusing him of being possessed by demons.
After his “Country First” PAC announcement , Fox News asked him if he feels like a dead man walking. Kinzinger answered, “I do, but it’s a good feeling….I’ve always said I’m willing to do what needs to be done even if it costs me my job. It’s not a job I do because I need the paycheck or the title. It’s because I’m passionate about what I believe.” He added, “I don’t know where this leads and if it’s the end of a political career or not. But I’m at total peace whatever that is, as long as I’m telling the truth.”
Back to the “hero thing”:
I still believe Representative Adam Kinzinger is a hero in his own right.
He served in the U.S. Air Force flying missions as a pilot in several theaters including the Middle East in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. He received the United States Air Force Airman’s Medal for saving the life of a young woman who was being violently attacked. He was also awarded the National Guard’s Valley Forge Cross for Heroism and was selected as the Southeastern Wisconsin American Red Cross Hero of the Year.
Furthermore, Merriam Webster defines heroism as “conduct especially as exhibited in fulfilling a high purpose or attaining a noble end.”
What a more noble end than making America noble again.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.