“This is no longer their Republican Party!” Donald Trump Jr. declared on January 6 during a fiery speech near the U.S. Capitol.
“This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party,” the president’s son insisted. “Today, Republicans, you are choosing a side for the future of this party. I suggest you choose wisely. ‘
And then, later in the day, all heels burst loose. A large number of angry cretins stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to prevent a legitimate presidential election from being certified. Five people were killed in the disappointment, including one member of the U.S. Capitol Police.
U.S. President Mary Miller, a first-year Illinois, a Republican, was at a rally the previous day and made a bizarre remark about what Adolf Hitler looked like children would be the future.
Both Miller and U.S. Representative Mike Bost (R-12) represent Southern Illinois, and after Congress reconvened that evening, they voted against confirming the outcome of the presidential election.
Bost and U.S. Representative Darin LaHood (R-18) last month signed a doomed attempt to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the election results.
While U.S. Representative Rodney Davis (R-13) has not gone as far as his three GOP colleagues, he has been an ardent supporter of President Trump for the past four years.
This is not the public face the party needs in the Chicago suburbs. And you simply can not win nationwide in Illinois without carrying the region.
U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-16), on the other hand, made a national name for himself by occasionally criticizing the president, and he has sharpened his game since it became clear that Trump was running for office. lost. However, he took it to a much higher level on the day of the uprising.
“I condemn this garbage outright,” Kinzinger said of Miller’s speech. He calls the storming of the Capitol a ‘coup attempt’. He complained to fellow Republicans for not wanting to confirm the outcome. And he said the president was a “weak, self-absorbed man” who was trying to “overthrow the will of the people”.
“He is no longer the leader of our party,” Kinzinger said of Trump. “And our party must reject these treacherous acts.”
When then-Congressman Ray LaHood (Darin’s father) thought of running for governor Rod Blagojevich, I wrote that the “moderate” Republicans of Washington, DC usually have voting records that do not look moderate when they walk across the country. . Kinzinger voted with Trump 92% of the time and definitely has a conservative record.
But man, these statements can wipe out a whole bunch of everything that can be thrown at him if he decides to elect him for a governor or U.S. Senate, especially in a state that Trump lost twice by 17 points.
One should never make predictions during times of great upheaval and change, so let us not anoint him yet. On top of that, we’ve all seen politicians rise up like rockets to fall just like meteors. And I have seen that many very solid, hardworking candidates fail simply because they lived in the ‘wrong’ district or state.
That being said, Kinzinger has a sharp mind and of course he knows how to take a hard blow.
Kinzinger won a McLean County boarding school when he was just 20 years old and then joined the Air Force after college and then flew missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. He won his first congressional election against a current Democrat and then defeated a longtime Republican official in a primary election. The man has serious chops.
I was impressed with the way he slammed Prime Minister JB Pritzker rhetorically on his heels last month over the LaSalle Veterans’ Home debacle, in which 35 residents died of COVID-19. Kinzinger also did not exactly intend to warn his voters to take precautions during the pandemic. The virus raged through the surrounding community as it found its way to the facility.
The money to fund the Republican Party is in the Chicago area, where most corporate types tend to avoid the far right from the far right. These people will definitely not want to live in Donald Trump’s GOP in the future, no matter what the president’s son says. So they are eager to embrace someone like Kinzinger.
But Kinzinger went so far as to ask Trump (even asking for his removal from office) that he seriously damaged his chances of winning a primary in the country. And even if he wins the round, a significant portion of the party’s base could furiously choose to skip him in a general election.
Keep looking.