As the Republican Party struggles with its identity in the wake of former President Trump, an Illinois Republican tries to prove that there is a base of Republican Party voters who want to give up the division and conspiracy theories he says have defined the party.
“The biggest danger now is that we become a group that gets involved – not just gets involved – trafficking in conspiracies and trafficking in lies,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger, who on Sunday plans to launch a video and website, country1st .com, to start the campaign.
Kinzinger, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump earlier this month, was one of the few Republican lawmakers willing to speak out against the former president’s actions. The campaign effort places him alongside Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming as one of the leaders of a wing of the party that seeks to distance itself from Trump.
Trump’s role in the January 6 uprising on Capitol Hill was a wake-up call, said Kinzinger.
“Republicans must say enough. It is time to turn off the outrage machine, reject the politics of personality and set aside conspiracy theories and anger. It is time to return from the edge of darkness and return to the ideals that have always been our guiding light, ”he said in the recorded video. “It is now or never. The choice is ours. I made mine and I hope that every Republican and every American who shares our values will choose to join me. We will resume our party.”
He says he is trying to lead Ronald Reagan’s party back to hope, optimism and truth. Kinzinger said he is aware of the challenges he is likely to face among Republicans who are still loyal to Trump. He did not warn GOP leaders about the launch.
The answer to his effort may provide Republicans with one of the first tests of whether Republican voters are receptive to their type of policy.
“Would we lose the Proud Boys? Perhaps. I’m fine with that, ”he said, referring to the violent extremist group. “But we would be bringing … that Republican who maybe voted for Biden and then voted negatively because they didn’t support Donald Trump, but gave the Republican Party one last chance.”
Kinzinger’s effort is in its infancy. He was reluctant to identify the next steps or what the movement would look like in six months, saying it would be driven by supporters and could include involvement in the Republican primaries. He said that these are not any personal ambitions for higher positions, although others almost certainly see this as a preliminary step towards the 2024 Republican presidential primaries.
Kinzinger’s effort positions him against House minority leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield and against Republicans who see maintaining a role for Trump as the key to reaching voters who could help them regain control of the House in 2022 McCarthy went to Mar-a-Lago in Florida this week to visit Trump, emerging with a joint photo and a deal by the former president to help Republican candidates.
Kinzinger had harsh words for McCarthy’s change of position on Trump’s responsibility for the Capitol riot, which left five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer. On January 13, McCarthy said that Trump “is responsible for [the] attack on Congress by mafia rebels, ”but he voted against impeachment. But just last week, McCarthy said that Trump did not provoke the crowd.
“When you go from calling this an uprising for which the president is guilty of thanking Donald Trump for his commitment to regaining the majority, that’s a big step in about three weeks,” he said.
Kinzinger’s effort comes ahead of a crucial week in which House Republicans will face their post-Trump strategy. On Wednesday, House Republicans will hold a discussion and potential vote on whether Cheney, who like Kinzinger also strongly opposed Trump’s efforts to overturn election results and supported his impeachment, should remain president of the Republican conference.
Republicans are also discussing how – or if – to deal with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), As a series of reports came out in the past few days highlighting her social media posts in which she said or favored comments that she described as prank calls two of the most lethal school shootings in American history and the September 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon.
She also said that the 2018 camp fire was started by a laser beam from space. Democrats, led by Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), have asked for her to be removed from office. Others say that she should, at the very least, be removed from her duties on the committee, which includes the Education Committee.