Rep. Adam Kinzinger is waging an uphill battle to wrestle the Republican Party away from former President Donald Trump, an effort that begins with plans to use an expanded political action committee to back like-minded candidates in the 2022 primaries.
The Illinois congressman concluded Republicans need to break with Trump after the former president’s grassroots supporters stormed the United States Capitol on Jan. 6 in a bid to stop Congress from certifying President Biden’s Electoral College victory. Kinzinger decided just last week to do more than talk, telling the Washington Examiner his effort could evolve from supporting GOP primary candidates to establishing “chapters of people that want to be involved” in fighting for control of the party.
“It just has blown up — and in a great way,” Kinzinger said Monday in an interview. “I think what I was on to without maybe fully realizing it, is there’s a lot of people that have left the Republican Party or are pondering leaving the party, but they’re obviously not Democrats, and they’re sitting around going: ‘I have nowhere to go.’ I’ve heard that from so many people.”
“So, I put that out there and said, ‘Let’s do a movement; let’s take this party back,’” he continued. “What that’s going to evolve into, daily, is going to be a decision we make. But I foresee, certainly, supporting good candidates that tell the truth.”
Kinzinger was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump one week before he left office on the grounds he incited the Capitol siege with unfounded claims that the November election was stolen. That vote could make it nearly impossible for Kinzinger to win renomination in his northwestern Illinois congressional district, a sign of how daunting his push to reclaim the Republican Party from Trump is.
The 45th president remains exceedingly popular with grassroots Republicans. This group is not alone among GOP voters in believing Trump’s assertion that he was cheated out of a second term. Despite all of the events of the past three months, the former president would still be a formidable candidate, perhaps the most formidable candidate, if he chose to seek the White House again in 2024.
Kinzinger, who turns 43 this month, did not vote for Trump in 2016 and has been a periodic critic of his over the past four years. But he never associated with the “Never Trump” movement and would temper his criticism. Kinzinger opposed Trump’s first impeachment, in 2019, and even voted for Trump on Nov. 3. But shaken by the former president’s post-election behavior and the Jan. 6 riots, the congressman was motivated to speak up and act.
Kinzinger filmed a splashy introduction video, revamped his existing leadership PAC, Country First, and invited voters to “join the movement” to save American democracy. Despite what appear to be long odds, the congressman expressed optimism that he can succeed over time.
“The benefit of people like me, and more people like me, just telling the truth, is not letting people forget the lessons of the sixth,” Kinzinger said of the riot. “Everything went so far off the rails that not only was there an attack, literally, on democracy, there are people that defended that attack on democracy — and that can never happen again.”
