Former U.S. Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air National Guard and a key figure in the January 6 congressional hearings, has long lamented the Republican Party’s descent, as he put it in his farewell speech to Congress, into a party that “shelter(s) the ignorant, the racists, who only stoke anger and hatred to those that are different than us.”
Kinzinger, who served Illinois in the House of Representatives for 12 years, was evidently then just getting started in his work repudiating the current MAGA-led GOP’s priorities.
Yep. They become increasingly rabid because only the threat of violence can scare people now. And we aren’t scared. Old hat for me https://t.co/YhgXSrdfGQ
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@AdamKinzinger) August 16, 2023
This week, as the second indictment emerged against former President Donald Trump for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election — Georgia DA Fani Willis‘s case joining Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s federal prosecution on Trump’s legal calendar — the former Illinois Congressman is being forced to consider the notion that Trump again may be the GOP nominee for President, as despite the indictments (four in all so far) Trump still leads in the polls.
Agreeing with conservative Christian lawyer Heath Mayo‘s assertion that if “Trumpism is on the ballot, so are the Constitution and the rule of law,” Kinzinger also agrees that Trump must lose, if he is the nominee, by a margin that stands as a referendum against fascism and against the acceptability of “lies and deceit” as commonplace political weapons. (Kinzinger is no liberal masquerading as a Republican — he voted to repeal Obamacare in 2017 and voted against Trump’s first impeachment. His subsequent vote to impeach Trump the second time drew MAGA’s ire.)
“If trump is the nominee, we need to see the most embarrassing, incredible loss for the GOP in 2024,” Kinzinger urges. “And all the enablers should be vomited out as a new generation takes over.”
If trump is the nominee, we need to see the most embarrassing, incredible loss for the GOP in 2024. And all the enablers should be vomited out as a new generation takes over https://t.co/Ja0cYsdMc8
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@AdamKinzinger) August 16, 2023
Kinzinger’s strong metaphoric language — “vomited out” — addresses his dissatisfaction with the current state of the GOP. When a system or organism has ingested a toxic substance, vomiting — induced or reflexive — is often a first critical response to preserve the health and integrity of the body. In the Georgia charges, Willis names 18 alleged co-conspirators in Trump’s plot to overturn the election — that’s a lot of vomiting.
Kinzinger recommends that the GOP needs to throw up to save itself. It’s a continuation of what he said on leaving Congress: “Our leaders today belittle, and in some cases justify, attacks on the U.S. Capitol as ‘legitimate political discourse’. The once great party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan has turned its back on the ideals of liberty and self-governance. Instead, it has embraced lies and deceit.” Better to vomit, Kinzinger contends, than to die from what’s been ingested.
