Ten House Republicans supported Donald Trump’s impeachment after the Jan. 6 attack, and at the time, the tally looked like evidence of a party that was prepared to move on from their failed, defeated president.
The prevailing winds in GOP politics soon shifted in Trump’s favor, and the Impeachment 10 quickly realized that their careers were now in jeopardy. Three members of the contingent faced primary rivals yesterday, and as The New York Times reported, at least one has already been defeated.
The defeat on Tuesday of Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan, the young conservative scion of a supermarket empire who voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump, was another sign that the party’s conservative core is bent on casting out those who have dared to break with Mr. Trump, who has embarked on a revenge tour aimed at punishing his adversaries.
It wasn’t a blowout, but it was enough: With just about all of the votes tallied, the incumbent congressman lost by about four points to John Gibbs, whom the Times described as “a former official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development with a history of firing off inflammatory, conspiratorial tweets.”
This is one of the races in which Democrats intervened in the hopes of helping a seemingly unelectable GOP radical win the primary, ostensibly giving Democrats a pick-up opportunity in one of Michigan’s most competitive congressional districts.
Of course, if the Democrats’ gamble doesn’t pay off, they will have inadvertently helped get yet another far-right conspiracy theorist elected to Congress.
As for the Impeachment 10, before the primary season even began in earnest, four members of the contingent — Ohio’s Anthony Gonzalez, New York’s John Katko, Illinois’ Adam Kinzinger, and Michigan’s Fred Upton — announced their retirements.








