The Text of the Republican Censure of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger Tells You Everything You Need to Know
The Republican National Committee now considers the January 6 committee "a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse."
_By Jack Holmes
Feb 4, 2022
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a389837...%20Openers
washington, dc december 1 l r rep liz cheney r wy, vice chair of the select committee investigating the january 6 attack on the capitol, and rep adam kinzinger r il listen during a committee meeting on capitol hill on december 1, 2021 in washington, dc the committee voted unanimously to recommend contempt of congress charges for former department of justice official jeffrey clark for defying his subpoena by refusing to answer questions and failing to hand over documents to the committee photo by drew angerergetty images
Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Liz Cheney was long ago excommunicated by the Wyoming Republican Party for the crime of suggesting that maybe January 6 was a bit of a problem. Her counterpart among the House Republican caucus's Lone Dissenters, Adam Kinzinger, was censured by an Illinois county Republican group in February 2021, less than a month after those tourists toured the Capitol like the Visigoths toured Rome.
And now both Cheney and Kinzinger are turning to face the wrath of the national Republican Party, which took less than a year to gather itself fully behind the notion that January 6 was no big deal and also all the really bad shit was done by antifa, or whatever. Stop asking questions, shut up.
The truly remarkable stuff lies in the nature of this draft resolution from the Republican National Committee intending to censure the two, who again have merely joined Democrats in saying that a president should not try to seize a second term by force in contravention of the expressed will of the American people.
The resolution is reportedly the work of David Bossie, a committeeman with a storied ratfucking career who was Donald Trump's deputy campaign manager in 2016, and Ronna Romney McDaniel, the RNC chair who has dropped her middle name in the last few years as it went from an asset to an albatross within Republican politics. Yes, McDaniel is Senator Mitt Romney's niece, which makes her uncle's statement on the resolution Friday all the more striking:
Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol. Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.
You hate to see an autogolpe tear a family apart.
But the text of the draft resolution itself is worth taking a gander at, if only because it points towards the sorry state of the Republican Party at this juncture. It is such a stream of grievance and conspiratorial nonsense that one can't help but wonder if it was dictated by one person in particular.
WHEREAS, The primary mission of the Republican Party is to elect Republicans who support the United States Constitution and share our values;
WHEREAS, The Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress have embarked on a systematic effort to replace liberty with socialism; eliminate border security in favor of lawless, open borders; create record inflation designed to steal the American dream from our children and grandchildren; neuter our national defense and a peace through strength foreign policy; replace President Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” with incompetence and illegal mandates; and destroy America’s economy with the Green New Deal;
Sorry, what does this have to do with January 6? Ah, it's an explicit detailing of the reactionary justification: the people who won the election are bad, so we are justified in doing anything to take power back from them. Nothing else matters.
When well-known radical socialist Joe Biden is purposefully creating inflation—don't think about it too hard—you might just have to shitcan the whole American experiment to stop him. Or at least refuse to acknowledge previous forays into that territory in order to give yourself a better chance of winning back the House.
WHEREAS, Winning back the majority in Congress, including the United States House of Representatives, in 2022 must be the primary goal of the House Republican Conference (“Conference”) and requires all Republicans working together to accomplish the same...
WHEREAS, The Conference must not be sabotaged by Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger who have demonstrated, with actions and words, that they support Democrat efforts to destroy President Trump more than they support winning back a Republican majority in 2022;
"Sabotage" and "destroy" are really the key words here, even if the resolution goes on to lay out the boilerplate right-wing complaints about the January 6 committee. (Also, the telltale use of "Democrat" as an adjective, a pure symptom of right-wing talk-radio brainworms.) What matters is that the committee is bad for Trump, which he is seeking to make synonymous with "bad for the Republican Party." That Republicans are now looking to go on record with their belief that a full accounting of the events of January 6 is bad for their party ought to tell its own story.
washington dc, usa january 6 trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the us capitol in washington dc on january 6, 2021 demonstrators breeched security and entered the capitol as congress debated the 2020 presidential election electoral vote certification photo by brent stirtongetty images
Watch out! They’re engaging in discourse.
But then we reach the thrilling crescendo:
WHEREAS, Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse, and they are both utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That the Republican National Committee hereby formally censures Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and shall immediately cease any and all support of them as members of the Republican Party...
Hold up a second: January 6 was just ordinary citizens engaging in some discourse? That is enlightening to know. Whomst among us has not chanted about lynching the sitting Vice President of the United States while engaging in a bit of discourse?
When discussing whether the Federal Reserve should raise interest rates to combat inflation, I routinely find myself bear-spraying cops and smearing shit in the halls of the national legislature.
This lines up with Donald Trump's new line that the street thugs of January 6 were actually Very Fine People he intends to pardon, the message being that other people who use lawlessness to advance his political ambitions will be similarly rewarded.
Meanwhile, the committee has spent a lot of its time interviewing high-powered politicos, not "ordinary citizens," and nobody stays ordinary for long when they attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in the goddamned United States of America.
These people had the unmitigated gall to kick off this little resolution with talk of the United States Constitution. They wipe their ass with the Constitution. If it's not useful to their ends, it's an inconvenience. Anyone who votes in favor of this should be ostracized from polite society for the rest of their lives. But shame is dead.
Shamelessness is a superpower. They'll rake in the donations, including from the same corporations who bravely abstained on principle for a few months, and probably win back control of Congress. At which point these Democrat attempts to persecute ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse will be finished for good.
So, too, will Kinzinger and Cheney, along with any realistic hope that one of our two major political parties will pull itself back from the authoritarian abyss.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a389837...%20Openers
The Republican National Committee now considers the January 6 committee "a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse."
Quote:Hold up a second: January 6 was just ordinary citizens engaging in some discourse? That is enlightening to know. Whomst among us has not chanted about lynching the sitting Vice President of the United States while engaging in a bit of discourse?
When discussing whether the Federal Reserve should raise interest rates to combat inflation, I routinely find myself bear-spraying cops and smearing shit in the halls of the national legislature.
_By Jack Holmes
Feb 4, 2022
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a389837...%20Openers
washington, dc december 1 l r rep liz cheney r wy, vice chair of the select committee investigating the january 6 attack on the capitol, and rep adam kinzinger r il listen during a committee meeting on capitol hill on december 1, 2021 in washington, dc the committee voted unanimously to recommend contempt of congress charges for former department of justice official jeffrey clark for defying his subpoena by refusing to answer questions and failing to hand over documents to the committee photo by drew angerergetty images
Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Liz Cheney was long ago excommunicated by the Wyoming Republican Party for the crime of suggesting that maybe January 6 was a bit of a problem. Her counterpart among the House Republican caucus's Lone Dissenters, Adam Kinzinger, was censured by an Illinois county Republican group in February 2021, less than a month after those tourists toured the Capitol like the Visigoths toured Rome.
And now both Cheney and Kinzinger are turning to face the wrath of the national Republican Party, which took less than a year to gather itself fully behind the notion that January 6 was no big deal and also all the really bad shit was done by antifa, or whatever. Stop asking questions, shut up.
The truly remarkable stuff lies in the nature of this draft resolution from the Republican National Committee intending to censure the two, who again have merely joined Democrats in saying that a president should not try to seize a second term by force in contravention of the expressed will of the American people.
The resolution is reportedly the work of David Bossie, a committeeman with a storied ratfucking career who was Donald Trump's deputy campaign manager in 2016, and Ronna Romney McDaniel, the RNC chair who has dropped her middle name in the last few years as it went from an asset to an albatross within Republican politics. Yes, McDaniel is Senator Mitt Romney's niece, which makes her uncle's statement on the resolution Friday all the more striking:
Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol. Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.
You hate to see an autogolpe tear a family apart.
But the text of the draft resolution itself is worth taking a gander at, if only because it points towards the sorry state of the Republican Party at this juncture. It is such a stream of grievance and conspiratorial nonsense that one can't help but wonder if it was dictated by one person in particular.
WHEREAS, The primary mission of the Republican Party is to elect Republicans who support the United States Constitution and share our values;
WHEREAS, The Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress have embarked on a systematic effort to replace liberty with socialism; eliminate border security in favor of lawless, open borders; create record inflation designed to steal the American dream from our children and grandchildren; neuter our national defense and a peace through strength foreign policy; replace President Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” with incompetence and illegal mandates; and destroy America’s economy with the Green New Deal;
Sorry, what does this have to do with January 6? Ah, it's an explicit detailing of the reactionary justification: the people who won the election are bad, so we are justified in doing anything to take power back from them. Nothing else matters.
When well-known radical socialist Joe Biden is purposefully creating inflation—don't think about it too hard—you might just have to shitcan the whole American experiment to stop him. Or at least refuse to acknowledge previous forays into that territory in order to give yourself a better chance of winning back the House.
WHEREAS, Winning back the majority in Congress, including the United States House of Representatives, in 2022 must be the primary goal of the House Republican Conference (“Conference”) and requires all Republicans working together to accomplish the same...
WHEREAS, The Conference must not be sabotaged by Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger who have demonstrated, with actions and words, that they support Democrat efforts to destroy President Trump more than they support winning back a Republican majority in 2022;
"Sabotage" and "destroy" are really the key words here, even if the resolution goes on to lay out the boilerplate right-wing complaints about the January 6 committee. (Also, the telltale use of "Democrat" as an adjective, a pure symptom of right-wing talk-radio brainworms.) What matters is that the committee is bad for Trump, which he is seeking to make synonymous with "bad for the Republican Party." That Republicans are now looking to go on record with their belief that a full accounting of the events of January 6 is bad for their party ought to tell its own story.
washington dc, usa january 6 trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the us capitol in washington dc on january 6, 2021 demonstrators breeched security and entered the capitol as congress debated the 2020 presidential election electoral vote certification photo by brent stirtongetty images
Watch out! They’re engaging in discourse.
But then we reach the thrilling crescendo:
WHEREAS, Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse, and they are both utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That the Republican National Committee hereby formally censures Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and shall immediately cease any and all support of them as members of the Republican Party...
Hold up a second: January 6 was just ordinary citizens engaging in some discourse? That is enlightening to know. Whomst among us has not chanted about lynching the sitting Vice President of the United States while engaging in a bit of discourse?
When discussing whether the Federal Reserve should raise interest rates to combat inflation, I routinely find myself bear-spraying cops and smearing shit in the halls of the national legislature.
This lines up with Donald Trump's new line that the street thugs of January 6 were actually Very Fine People he intends to pardon, the message being that other people who use lawlessness to advance his political ambitions will be similarly rewarded.
Meanwhile, the committee has spent a lot of its time interviewing high-powered politicos, not "ordinary citizens," and nobody stays ordinary for long when they attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in the goddamned United States of America.
These people had the unmitigated gall to kick off this little resolution with talk of the United States Constitution. They wipe their ass with the Constitution. If it's not useful to their ends, it's an inconvenience. Anyone who votes in favor of this should be ostracized from polite society for the rest of their lives. But shame is dead.
Shamelessness is a superpower. They'll rake in the donations, including from the same corporations who bravely abstained on principle for a few months, and probably win back control of Congress. At which point these Democrat attempts to persecute ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse will be finished for good.
So, too, will Kinzinger and Cheney, along with any realistic hope that one of our two major political parties will pull itself back from the authoritarian abyss.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a389837...%20Openers
