When Adam Kinzinger launched his career in Republican politics in 2010, the Illinois congressional candidate welcomed the support of Sarah Palin and Tea Party groups. It was widely assumed that the young military veteran — Kinzinger was only 33 when he first arrived on Capitol Hill — would be a reliable ally of the GOP’s conservative base.
As regular readers might recall, those assumptions proved largely true. Kinzinger was often described as a relative moderate in his party, but his voting record reflected the congressman’s conservative worldview. While no one ever lumped him in with the GOP’s partisan bomb-throwers, Kinzinger rarely broke party ranks.
But in time, the Illinois congressman saw his party drifting further away from democratic principles and aligning itself with Donald Trump. Kinzinger seemed determined to resist the tide and help prevent his party from drifting further into madness.
After the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, for example, House Democratic leaders pushed a resolution calling on then-Vice President Mike Pence and the White House cabinet to remove Trump from office. Kinzinger was literally the only GOP member to vote for it. Soon after, 10 House Republicans voted to hold Trump accountable through impeachment, and Kinzinger was one of the 10. (He proceeded to plead with Senate Republicans to convict Trump, insisting it would help “save America from going further down a sad, dangerous road.” Most GOP senators ignored the advice.)
In July 2021, Kinzinger agreed to serve on the Jan. 6 committee, at which point Republican leaders stopped talking to him. In October 2021, the congressman — an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran — announced that he wouldn’t run for re-election.
This morning, as NBC News reported, Kinzinger took a step that would’ve been exceedingly difficult to predict a decade ago.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois Republican who forcefully repudiated then-President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, endorsed Democratic President Joe Biden on Wednesday, blasting the presumptive GOP nominee as a “direct threat to every fundamental American value.”
“[W]hile I certainly don’t agree with President Biden on everything, and I never thought I’d be endorsing a Democrat for president, I know that he will always protect the very thing that makes America the best country in the world: our democracy,” Kinzinger said in a video message released this morning.
“Donald Trump poses a direct threat to every fundamental American value,” Kinzinger continued. “He doesn’t care about our country. He doesn’t care about you. He only cares about himself, and he will hurt anyone or anything in pursuit of power.”
“There is too much at stake to sit on the sidelines,” Kinzinger concluded. “So to every American of every political party and those of none, I say: Now is not the time to watch quietly as Donald Trump threatens the future of America. Now is the time to unite behind Joe Biden, and show Donald Trump off the stage once and for all.”
The Democratic incumbent was predictably pleased to get the backing. “This is what putting your country before your party looks like,” Biden wrote in a social media message. “I’m grateful for your endorsement, Adam.”
This comes on the heels of former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan also backing the incumbent Democratic president. “Unlike Trump, I’ve belonged to the GOP my entire life. This November, I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass,” Duncan wrote in his endorsement announcement.
Stepping back, the larger question is how much company Kinzinger and Duncan will have in the GOP’s pro-Biden bloc. By any fair measure, it’s an exceedingly small group. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson has encouraged people to vote for Biden, and former deputy White House press secretary Sarah Matthews, said she’s voting for Biden. At least for now, that’s more or less where the list ends. I kept a close eye on this dynamic four years ago, and found quite a few GOP partisans — former Republican National Committee chairs, former Republican cabinet secretaries, former Republican governors and former Republican members of Congress — who publicly expressed support for the Biden-led Democratic ticket. Will we see something comparable between now and Election Day 2024? Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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