My Congressman. Hopefully a mistake to be rectified in 2022. Kinzinger has always struck me as a complete phony dedicated to only one thing: the advancement of Adam Kinzinger. Here he is laying the groundwork for his inevitable switch to the Democrat Party. He has drawn a challenger and I wish her all the luck in the world.
If I’m not mistaken, Republican turncoats who have been successful at building careers in the Democratic Party have been Rockefeller Republicans whose voting records were closer to the median of the Democratic caucus than they were to the median of the Republican caucus. You had a bloc of such Republicans in Congress in 1970. The only such person elected to Congress de novo after 1986 was Lincoln Chafee, and the entire residue had retired or been voted out by 2007. Kinzinger has been a problem for party whips (ACU lifetime rating 58 out of 100), but his expressed preferences have been so different from the median Democratic member he cannot sell himself as a Democratic pol without looking like a total opportunist. There was a Republican from Long Island who tried this maneuver about 20 years ago. He was out the next election; by some accounts, even his wife was reluctant to vote for him.
Kinzinger makes Mayor Quimby of The Simpsons’ mythical Springfield look unquestionably genuine.
Speaking of voting, I’ve noticed a slow change in how news outlets talk about election fraud. (And they do choose their words very carefully and collude in their choices; it’s why you always heard about President Trump’s “ban on travel from several Muslim-majority countries” even though Islam had nothing to do in and of itself with the travel ban and it could have been described a dozen other ways.)
-At first it was “there is no evidence of election fraud in the 2020 elections.”
-Then it became “there are only isolated and rare examples of election fraud.”
-Then “there is no evidence of widespread election fraud.”
-And now it is “it has not been proven that there was sufficient election fraud to change the outcome of the election.”
If they thought they could have gotten away with saying “there is no evidence of fraud” they would have just continued saying that. The fact that they have been adjusting their description is a good sign that efforts towards the truth are working.
But don’t get too hopeful; Republicans are masters are screwing up this sort of thing.
Can someone who knows the military educate me? When my father enlisted in the Air Force in 1948 (at age 20, after a couple of years of college), I think he started at the bottom (what’s now called an “Airman Basic”, i think just a ‘private’ at that time) and had been promoted to staff sergeant by the time he was discharged. Kinzinger as far as I can tell wasn’t in ROTC and didn’t have any acquired technical skills, but when he enlists at age 25, he is given a commission as a 2d lieutenant. How common is that? (Kinzinger was a local elected official in McLean County; his capsule biographies do not indicate what was his day job).
Just means he enlisted as an officer.
https://www.military-ranks.org/army/second-lieutenant
Means all he’d need is a four year degree and going through OCS. (officer boot camp, go simplify greatly)
Obama very much favored that route.