Second Verse, Same as the First: Adam Kinzinger, Renegade

Renegade - Adam Kinzinger

Way back in 2005, Christine Todd Whitman (once the moderate Republican governor of New Jersey and Bush II’s first head of the EPA) wrote the book It’s My Party, Too.  No, it wasn’t a shout-out to Lesley Gore; it was Whitman bemoaning the cooptation of the Republican party by its “social fundamentalist wing.” The more things change, the more they stay the same: in 2023, Whitman’s complaint is echoed by none other than Adam Kinzinger, retired Republican Representative from Illinois who is reviled by the modern version of that wing, MAGA Trumpists, for having the temerity to vote to impeach their… their… whatever he is: god, oracle, führer...  

In case you’ve been asleep for the past two-plus years, Kinzinger (along with Wyoming's Liz Cheney) was one of two Republicans who served on the House committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021. He’s a small-town boy from Bloomington, Illinois; a decorated veteran who served in Iraq as an Air Force pilot; and a six-term congressman from his home state. His background is that of a life-long conservative with a fundamentalist Christian upbringing. And, like Whitman before him, Kinzinger is aghast at the cult of personality that has taken over the party to which he has devoted the past thirty years of his life.

In Renegade (subtitled Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country), Kinzinger and co-author Michael D’Antonio detail his upbringing, his military career, and his years in Congress. It’s never a secret that the former congressman is steadfastly conservative in the so-called “establishment” sense: pro-business, anti-tax, anti-regulation, pro-military. You can’t read this book and claim that Kinzinger particularly likes Nancy Pelosi or, for that matter, west-coast (or east-coast) liberals. He spends plenty of page space bemoaning how the coastal “elite” make fun of “flyover country” (as an aside, I grew up in a far smaller town than Kinzinger one state away, and I don’t feel like the coastal elite do that).

Kinzinger served in Congress under the speakerships of John Boehner (initially misidentified as a representative from Indiana) and Paul Ryan, representatives he lauded as both intelligent and pragmatic. He was less kind to Kevin McCarthy, who he considers the political equivalent of a weathervane; pointing in whatever direction is best for his career. Come to think of it, Kinzinger holds little but scorn for those politicians who value re-election over principle. 

Most of all, however, Kinzinger has nothing but contempt for the man he considers the most dangerous person ever to hold office in the United States. No, not Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz, not the woman in the white coat or the high-school dropout from Colorado. It's Donald John Trump, who with his sycophants and acolytes, nearly overthrew a government after more than 230 years of peace. The leader of a ragtag band of “marauders… ignorant of current events, American history, and the Constitution, yet full of righteousness” will receive no respect from Kinzinger.  Will what the former congressman has to say change anything? It’s doubtful; for those who swallow QAnon are and will remain unlikely to listen. They’re the cult members who, when they learn that Kinzinger has written this book, write one-star reviews at “the river” calling it fantasy or satire. As Kinzinger himself concludes, the tyranny of the minority is here for at least the next six years. One can only hope it will die with time. But I’m not holding my breath.

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