GOP Rep. Kinzinger launches PAC to challenge Trump wing of the party
I’m reminded these days of the classic Monty Python “Election Night Special” sketch.
In the sketch, three political parties — the Sensible Party, the Silly Party, and the Slightly Silly Party — vie (along with the independent “very silly” candidate) for various offices.
There are a lot of great moments in this bit, but among my favorites are when they introduce a Silly candidate, TarquinFin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F’tang-F’tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel, and the independent very silly candidate. And you’ll just have to click here to see that name, because it’s cuckoo long.
So the sketch comes to mind because, well, what was once the Grand Old Party appears to have bifurcated into a slightly silly group of mostly reality-based Republicans and a much larger cohort of shithouse-bonkers, barking-mad, proto-fascistic kookaburras sittin’ on the ol’ gum tree.
Anyway, Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois is among the former.
Check this.
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.
“Stark divide”? I’d say fucking chasm. But let’s not quibble.
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.
He hopes? Me hopes too. We need to keep a seed of sanity planted in that rich, weird loam that undergirds Trumplandia.
“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.”
Thanks, Adam. Godspeed and good luck.
You’ll need it. Oy, vey, will you ever.
”This guy is a natural. Sometimes I laugh so hard I cry.” — Bette Midler on author Aldous J. Pennyfarthing, via Twitter. Trump is gone, but the righteous mocking goes on forever. Thanks to Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, Dear Fcking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump, Dear Prsident A**clown and Dear F*cking Moron, you can purge the Trump years from your soul sans the existential dread. Only laughs from here on out.
