What’s the point of having “Republicans,” like Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, who despise the Party’s grassroots supporters, don’t support its limited government constitutional
principles and vote with the Democratic Party?
And this goes way beyond the interests of former President Trump and whether you like or dislike his style – it’s about the most fundamental policies that hold the Republican electoral coalition together and how Republicans treat each other to build and keep a winning coalition.
As our friend Stephen Kruiser, who writes PJ Media’s must-read Morning Briefing, put it so well:
Kinzinger and Cheney have become odious backstabbers who are aiding and abetting Pelosi’s unhinged corruption, all for a little attention. They’re being hailed as “principled” by a press corps that would have a fatal allergic reaction if it came within a mile of the real definition of the word. It’s like having a Mexican drug cartel as the only group that praises your business model.
And as the inimitable Mr. Kruiser pointed out, it wasn’t Rightwing scalp hunters like us who coined the term, “Pelosi Republicans,” it was House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Kruiser seems to see House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s comment as a redemptive moment and perhaps it is more evidence that McCarthy is figuring out the MAGA Movement is here to stay and is a force beyond the personality of former President Trump.
For our part, we continue to place Kevin McCarthy where we place all politicians (even Donald Trump) we’re with you as long as you are with us.
The conversation about whether to “purge” Cheney and Kinzinger reminds us of a two-year period long ago in our career when we worked closely with Rep. Chris Shays and his staff. Mr. Shays was a social liberal from Connecticut and one of a handful of “moderate” Republicans who kept the GOP in the majority in the early 2000s.
Mr. Shays got a lot of pressure from the House leadership to vote the conference position and he got a lot of guff from some other House Republicans who derisively referred to him as “Speaker Shays” because by withholding his vote on some key issues he appeared to be usurping the role of the Speaker as Party Leader.
And needless to say, he was regularly scourged by the conservative media, such as it was back then, and by conservative pundits and commentators on TV, radio and in print.
Through all that I never heard Mr. Shays criticize another Republican or do anything to undermine the House Republican leadership. If I’m wrong about this I’m happy to be corrected, but my recollection is he said his piece behind the closed doors of the Conference meetings and voted his conscience on the Floor.
If the media asked why he didn’t vote the party line his answer was always based in principle and conscience, not personality, and I never once heard him speculate about joining the Democrats or otherwise doing anything to destroy the GOP’s fragile House majority.
I still think Mr. Shays was wrong about a lot of stuff, but he was whip-smart, principled and one of the kindest and most polite people I’ve met in almost 50-years in politics – none of those encomiums could be applied to Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger.
So, the question is, if Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger are no longer talking like, acting like or voting like conservatives or at least Republicans, what to do about it?
As CHQ Chairman Richard Viguerie said in his book TAKEOVER, It’s the Primaries, stupid! And thus, we find ourselves opposed to some kind of top-down purge. A political party must be made-up of real live voters, using it to express their values and policy preferences. The better way to deal with miscreants like Cheney and Kinzinger is to find scrupulously clean, principled, limited government constitutional conservative candidates, whose heads won’t be turned by the Washington swamp, to run against them in the primary – and then pour all our conservative money and manpower resources into winning the primary and defeating Cheney and Kinzinger.
Nancy Pelosi
January 6 Commission
Liz Cheney
Adam Kinzinger
RINOs
Kevin McCarthy
MAGA Movement
Donald Trump
2022 GOP primaries
conservative challengers
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