Adam Kinzinger, The Lincoln Project, and the Post-Trump GOP

The future of the GOP remains uncertain, but there is good news mingled with the bad.

The year is 2021, Trump is finally out of the White House, and still, the country finds itself captivated by him. The Senate was only just recently in the midst of conducting an impeachment trial for the events of January 6th, and, unsurprisingly, there was no gesture of miraculous courage on the part of the Senate GOP. Trump was once again left off the hook for his actions.

While the trial went forward, however, more important events regarding the future of the GOP have taken place under the radar.

Adam Kinzinger, a Republican congressman from Illinois and the emerging leader of principled conservatism in Washington, founded a new political action committee in the hopes of pulling the GOP away from Trump’s grip and back towards principled constitutional conservatism.

On the other side of the aisle, the Lincoln Project, a PAC founded by GOP expatriates before the election to oppose Trump, has undergone a near-total collapse. These developments both represent a hopeful future for conservatives.

The first development should bring joy to principled conservatives across the nation. Adam Kinzinger is a principled man. He was elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010. In the aftermath of the attempted coup on January 6th, Kinzinger was the first GOP congressman to call for Trump’s removal from office, staking claim to a position that a handful of other GOP Congressmen would later take.

Calling for Trump’s removal was a principled stand for the Constitution, and Kinzinger, despite risking his position in DC as well as his life, was brave enough to take it. This action by itself should give all conservatives hope. Representative Kinzinger is young, and his willingness to stand for the Constitution in the face of his own party shows that the GOP is not, as many have proclaimed it, dead in the water.

There will be more conservative officials willing to stand up like he has as the next few years unfold, and all principled conservatives should jump on this chance to snatch the party away from Trump’s ilk. Adam’s new venture should help us do that.

His new PAC, aptly named Country First, is dedicated to supporting principled conservatives' rise to prominence in the party. Specifically, the PAC aims to support conservatives in the primaries and the general election.

It is imperative that Kinzinger is given as much support as possible. This is a worthwhile cause. If we can save the GOP from the wreckage that Trump has cast it into, conservatism can quickly rebound as a potent political stance. The country cannot afford for principled, constitutional conservatism to be cast into the political wilderness once more, as it was in the aftermath of FDR’s election and the Democratic Party’s subsequent political dominance over the nation for the next 50 years.

The second development also gives conservatives such as myself hope. The Lincoln Project was, ostensibly, founded on the premise of opposing Trump and his allies in the general election and subsequent elections. While a seemingly noble cause, the endeavor quickly devolved into a wing of the Democratic Party.

While it had large swathes of support across the Never-Trump wing of the GOP, skeptics, including myself and Justin Stapley here at the Liberty Hawk, understood the central problem with the Project: it had no standing principles.

In declaring its sole mission as opposition to one man, the Lincoln Project doomed itself to failure. It stopped being conservative almost as soon as it began. It endorsed Democratic candidates at all levels solely because they didn’t have an R next to their name. At one point, it endorsed Democratic policy proposals, such as Medicare-for-All. It went so far as to criticize Susan Collins for her vote on Brett Kavanaugh, citing his potential stance on abortion as reason.

Think about that. A supposedly conservative organization threw a GOP Senator under the bus because her vote might hurt abortion rights in the US.

These problems became endemic to the whole organization, and as soon as Trump was out of office, the house of cards came crashing down. The stories of corruption are plentiful, and I won’t bother recounting them. The point that should be taken away from this is clear: if conservatives truly want to rid themselves of Trump, we must present a counterargument to the country. People are desperate for principled positions. Let’s provide them. We cannot solely be anti-Trump, or anti-Democratic. We must stand for something.

If the GOP is to survive, and it must survive for the sake of principled conservatism, more men and women need to stand up as Adam Kinzinger has done. They need to stand for something, not just stand against someone. Principles are worth fighting for. Men are not worth fighting against. If more people can recognize this fact, as Kinzinger has, the future of conservatism will be bright.