Today, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” is on to its 490th original profile, and in it, we’re going to talk about Congressman Adam Kinzinger, the sitting U.S. House Representative from Illinois’ 16th Congressional District. He first reached office in… you guessed it, the 2010 Tea Party Wave, defeating Democratic incumbent Debbie Halvorson in Illinois’ 16th District with some support from party big-wigs, and an endorsement from Sarah Palin, back before that was akin to the political kiss of death for a candidate. In 2012, after redistricting, Kizinger hopped over o Illinois’ 16th to unseat sitting GOP Rep. Don Manzullo in a hotly contested primary battle. Since, Kizinger has won handily, netting 60-70% of the vote against under-funded Democrats in 2012 and 2014.
Now, of course one of the bigger political stories of 2015 was the controversy surrounding the heavily doctored “sting” videos created by the Center for Medical Progress, a radical anti-abortion group, that contained supposed secret “undercover” information that proved Planned Parenthood was dismembering the unborn and selling the body parts for profit. The problem is, of course, that the Center for Medical Progress were all deliberately deceiving the American people so that there would be enough outrage, that before anyone thought twice, they could have Congressional Republicans vote to cut Planned Parenthood’s funding, and subsequent investigations proved that. For their attempts at perpetrating this manufactured lie, they ended up on the receiving end of a lawsuit from Planned Parenthood, as well as an indictment for tampering with government records for two of their senior officers.
While most of the country caught on to their deception, Republicans only tried throwing gasoline on the proverbial fire to incite the mob. Adam Kinzinger, in particular, was willing to talk about a government shutdown due to it, and compared the videos themselves to Nazi Concentration Camp experiments on conservative talk radio.
And it’s part of that sort of reaction that the GOP had that served as a stochastic terror trigger to send a man named Robert Lewis Dear over the edge, and to shoot up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. But Kinzinger wasn’t satisfied with the violence his party incited, not at all. During the five hour siege that left three people dead, and many others hospitalized or pinned inside the building, Adam Kinzinger was live on CNN, and said he expected an apology from Planned Parenthood if it turned out they were not the intended target of the shooter. We’ll repeat that… Kinzinger demanded an apology from the organization attacked while there was still gunfire being heard, and an active shooter was still attacking them. Kinzinger has never apologized for his remarks.
And now… let’s look at his voting record:
- January 5th, 2011: Rep. Kinzinger co-sponsors and votes for the first attempt by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He has voted for every attempt to do so since.
- February 18th, 2011: Adam Kinzinger votes to defund Planned Parenthood, on the very same day his “smaller government principles” compelled him to vote to continue funding taxpayer dollars towards NASCAR sponsorships.
- March 17th, 2011: Kinzinger votes to defund National Public Radio.
- May 31st, 2011: Adam Kinzinger votes against raising the Debt Ceiling limit, which if not lifted, economists warn could lead to the collapse of not just the American economy, but the global economy. Worse yet, even the Republicans’ threatening to hold it hostage during this time led to the United States’ having its credit rating decreased by Standard and Poor’s for the first time in its history a few months later.
- September 14th, 2012: Rep. Kinzinger tries to score partisan points by voting for the “No More Solyndras” Act.
- June 18th, 2013: Kinzinger co-sponsors and votes for the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortion at 20 weeks.
- June 9th, 2013: Adam Kinzinger votes against restoring $20.5 billion to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
- September 30th, 2013: Rep. Kinzinger voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown.
- February 26th, 2014: Adam Kinzinger tries making hay of of the faux “IRS Scandal” by voting for the Stop the Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act (note, the IRS was not found to have actually been doing this).
- July 10th, 2014: Kinzinger votes for House Amendment 1040, to prevent the implementation of the dreaded United Nations Agenda 21 Treaty, that in spite of just being recommended climate change guidelines, have many conspiracy theorists within the extreme right convinced it’s a plot for global domination.
- January 22nd, 2015: An anti-abortion bill, HR 7, was moving through the House, and was halted because even some members of the GOP were put off by the language in the bill regarding its definition of rape. Adam Kinzinger, however, had no problem with that, and voted for it anyway.
- February 3rd, 2015: Rep. Kinzinger votes for the 60th Republican attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act. This in spite of the fact that the law is not just working, but better than experts predicted.
- May 13th, 2015: Adam Kizinger votes for HR 36, a 20 week abortion ban.
- September 11th, 2015: Kinzinger votes against the United States’ nuclear treaty with Iran.
- September 18th, 2015: Rep. Kinzinger votes for a bill with most House Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, based on highly edited “sting” videos submitted by a Pro-Life advocacy group that have been repeatedly debunked by investigators.
- November 19th, 2015: Kinzinger co-sponsors and votes for the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, reacting to the terror attacks in Paris by jihadists from France and Belgium by trying to create greater restrictions to keep out Syrian refugees, of whom exactly zero were involved in those attacks. One terrorist had a fake passport of a member of Assad’s army, apparently to create a false trail to help in their escape, or hoping that the attacks would be blamed on Syrian refugees, and the governments of nations like France and the United States would fall for it and not allow refugees to escape ISIS abroad. And… the Congressman fell for it.
- February 2nd, 2016: Adam Kinzinger votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
And now, the brutally depressing part… in spite of all members of Congress having a pathetically low approval rating, and Adam Kinzinger’s heartless comments about victims of a mass shooting while they were still laid up in a hospital… no one filed to run against him as a Democrat in Illinois’ 16th District.
Even though it only has a +4 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index. (Great job there, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Jesus.)
But hey, Kinzinger had a primary challenger at least, right? Well, not anymore. Colin McGroarty was a candidate who filed to run against Kinzinger, but he was thrown off of the ballot for not having the correct number of signatures, after the Illinois Board of Elections noted his signature list contained the same people signing more than once, presumably at different McGroarty events. So, let there be no doubt about it… Adam Kinzinger is running unopposed, and is guaranteed a fourth term in office.
You may now go to your window, open it, and recreate the scene from Network.
One Year Ago, May 30th, 2015: Michael Peroutka (MD)