24 United States The EconomistFebruary 6th 2021
“P
rofiles in courage”, John F. Kennedy’s ghostwritten hom-
age to politicians who stood on principle against their own
parties, is a revealingly slim tome. Even in the 19th century, from
which most of Kennedy’s eight examples were drawn, the social
and electoral disincentives to crossing a party line were formida-
ble. With the introduction of the primary system in the 1970s,
which made candidates accountable to their parties’ most raving
loyalists, they have increased. And politicians, who mostly want to
be liked even more than the rest of us, are especially averse to such
pressures. Depressing as the Republicans’ capitulation to Donald
Trump has been, history suggests it was on the cards.
This makes the one-man resistance to Mr Trump and all his
works latterly launched by Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illi-
nois all the more remarkable. Mr Trump’s few Republican critics
have mostly been on the way out, as Bob Corker and Jeff Flake were,
or, like the Never Trumpers, already in the wilderness. A couple of
others, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney have strong enough
home-state brands to get away with criticising the former presi-
dent selectively. By contrast, Mr Kinzinger, a 42-year-old House
member whose good looks and television manner are said to have
impressed Mr Trump, is in his political prime, vulnerable to the
ruling Trumpists, but now all in against them.
The air-force veteran was one of the first Republicans to con-
gratulate Mr Biden on his win and almost the only House Repub-
lican to dismiss Mr Trump’s election-fraud conspiracy as danger-
ous nonsense. After the insurrection it sparked (which Mr
Kinzinger claims to have been forewarned of by the threats he re-
ceived on social media) he was the only Republican to vote for Mr
Trump to be removed under the 25th amendment. He was one of
the ten who voted for his impeachment. And where the other nine,
including Liz Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican, are
now mostly lying low, Mr Kinzinger has expanded his critique.
In an interview this week he described Mr Trump as symptom-
atic of a deeper rot on the right, the politics of nihilism and griev-
ance he encountered on entering Congress in 2011. Though nomi-
nally a Tea Partier, he unveiled McCainite views and an interest in
governing. His fellow insurgents meanwhile pursued the brain-
less extremism (“legislative terrorism,” he calls it) of the FreedomCaucus,a precursortoTrumpism.Caucus members such as Mick
Mulvaney became zealous Trump enablers. Mr Kinzinger consid-
ers their belligerent colleague Jim Jordan the de facto House Re-
publican leader. And he has had it with the lot of them.
He says he regrets voting for Mr Trump, is glad Mr Biden won
and advocates sweeping Republican reform. The angry pushback
he is getting is only making him more critical. After a relation and
fellow evangelical Christian accused him of being possessed by
the devil, he slammed the slavishness of Mr Trump’s Christian fan
base: “The devil’s ultimate trick for Christianity...is embarrassing
the church”. This week he announced his intention to lead a “coun-
try first” campaign against Trumpism. “It’s time to unplug the out-
rage machine, reject the politics of personality, and cast aside the
conspiracy theories and the rage,” he said in a promotional video.
He knows he is up against it. The Trumpists are in charge be-
cause that is what Republican voters seem to want. Yet he makes a
reasonable political and stronger personal case for sticking it to
them anyhow. He suggests many Republicans are backing Mr
Trump for want of alternative leaders. “People need to be remind-
ed that the Republican Party has this rich history. We used to be op-
timistic,” he says. He then compares the current state of Abraham
Lincoln’s party to a drunk awaking after a “massive bender”.
“You’re like, what the hell did I do last night? And you have a
choice. You can take a delicious Bloody Mary, or actually confront
your choices and become a better person.” Mr Kinzinger, a former
college dropout, speaks with the authority of one who knows what
it is to err. He also has logic on his side. Republicans need to ex-
pand their support, which post-insurrection Trumpism cannot
do. “There’s just not enough Proud Boys or far-right fringe groups
to compensate for the people we’ve alienated,” he says.
He has probably already guaranteed himself a primary chal-
lenge. But so what? he says, before pausing, gunslinger-style, to
spit a glob of tobacco into an empty cola bottle. There are worse
things than political failure—a truth he says he learned fighting in
Iraq. “And it’s not like all I ever wanted to be was a congressman.”
However Mr Kinzinger gets on, his brave stand is already signif-
icant. It shows how beleaguered the Republican mainstream is. He
is hardly a front-rank leader and pretty much out on his own. And
yet his argument that the moment for a reckoning is now, when Mr
Trump’s defeat and insurrection are fresh in the mind, is persua-
sive. The former president’s continued grip on the party is
strengthening its worst elements, such as the hate-filled Marjorie
Taylor Greene. It is also eroding the scope of his likeliest succes-
sors, such as Nikki Haley or Marco Rubio, to repudiate them. If
they will not turn on Trumpism now, they will struggle to do so
credibly later. Mr Kinzinger might even turn out to have been his
party’s last best hope of a return to sanity.A zinger from Kinzinger
He will have been a good advertisement for heroic failure if so. Un-
like his Trump-beaten colleagues, with their telltale aggressive de-
fensiveness, he exudes contentment. Embracing the possibility of
failure is liberating, he says: “If you say, career-wise, I’m already
dead and I’m just going to speak the truth, you may end up not get-
ting re-elected, but you can feel pretty good about it.”
Kennedy’s exemplars must have felt a similar satisfaction in
their noble, mostly failed, undertakings to limit the spread of slav-
ery, prevent the civil war and so forth. They were also immortal-
ised for them. That is another consolation Mr Kinzinger might
hope for, as he takes his slingshot to the Goliath of Mar-a-Lago. 7Lexington The courage of Adam Kinzinger
A congressman from Illinois has launched the most full-throated Republican challenge to populism