Adam Kinzinger Is a Dishonest Clown

Over the weekend, in the sort of Twitter episode we typically associate with a blood-alcohol-level that disqualifies a person from operating heavy machinery, Representative Adam Kinzinger decided that our own Dan McLaughlin was a stooge for Vladimir Putin.

Why? Well, that’s not really clear. “Here is what’s amazing,” Kinzinger wrote on Twitter. “In Ukraine they appreciate life, in Russia Putin gives you a car (lada) for your son. But he won’t spend time appreciating your sacrifice. Keep this in mind pro-lifers.”

So far, so incomprehensible. Then, somehow, it got worse. When Dan asked, “WTF does any of this have to do with pro-lifers?” Kinzinger responded: “I’m pro-life. But you all defend Putin for some reason.”

To make matters still worse, Kinzinger added:

Really? Dan McLaughlin “defends Putin”? Dan McLaughlin has been silent on Putin and his invasion of Ukraine? The Dan McLaughlin whose judgments of Putin have been — without exception — that he’s “a James Bond villain . . . who has invaded his neighbors before”; that he’s a “dictator” and a “strongman”; that he’s “the bad guy” who runs a “repressive state” on “brute force and bluster”; that he heads up a “revanchist Russia” that “seeks the extermination of the Ukrainian state”? The same Dan McLaughlin who has written that “Putin is the bad actor here; he’s what drives the war. If you’re morally indifferent to that, you’ve elevated neutrality above virtue or order”? The same Dan McLaughlin who has complained that, while most Republicans back Ukraine, a “fair number of Trump partisans in the media to see Putin as a friend in domestic American political squabbles”? The same Dan McLaughlin who has said of Zelensky that he “is everything you could ask from a man whose country is against the wall: emotional, determined, and specifically evocative rather than windy and general”? The same Dan McLaughlin who wrote: “Godspeed to Zelensky and his nation in this hour of need”? The same Dan McLaughlin who has observed of Ukraine: “Ukraine today is the face of how democracy, liberty, & national self-determination look in much of the world in 2022: fitful & flawed, but deserving of more chances to survive & improve. Russia is the face of the ancient enemy of all those things, bent on extinguishing them”? The same Dan McLaughlin who has proposed that “if your sympathies are visibly not with Ukraine against Russia in this war, expect people to lose respect for you”? The same Dan McLaughlin who has contended that “Putin’s regime is malicious and a malignant influence on the politics of the U.S. and other democratic nations”? That one?

Maybe Kinzinger mistook Dan for the editors of National Review? That seems unlikely, given that their stated views have been that: (1) Joe Biden erred by “inadvertently encouraging a Russian invasion of Ukraine”; that Putin’s case for the invasion was “delusional” and based upon “a fanciful version of history and a litany of grievances that only an ideological fanatic could consider legitimate,” and that they have opened “a new, more dangerous chapter in the history of the West, one that the U.S. and its allies will have to meet with urgency and resolve”; (2) that the “Senate was right” to spend $40 billion on aid to Ukraine, because “Vladimir Putin is waging a war of aggression that we should want to fail,” because “Putin is in a de facto alliance with China and Iran to end the global preeminence of the U.S.-led Western world,” and because “Ukraine deserves all the assistance we can reasonably supply it”; (3) that “we should continue to strongly back the Ukrainians,” that “it is Russia, of course, that bears the responsibility for all this,” and that “if there were justice in the world, every last Russian tank and rocket launcher would be ground to dust and Vladimir Putin chased from power”; and, most recently, (4) that it is a disgrace that the “Kremlin was planning to hold sham referenda in the occupied regions in order to claim a patina of legitimacy and legality for its brutal occupation.”

As for me: My clearly stated view of Putin is that he is “evil”; that his rule has been one of “perversion”; that he is a “tyrant who calls himself . . . president”; and that, while I worried about the likelihood of such an outcome, what I would like to have happened in Ukraine was that:

Outraged by Russia’s aggression, armed Ukrainians in both the country’s military and its spontaneously formed civilian militias are able to fight hard enough in all regions that the demoralized and confused Russian army retreats with its tail between its legs. Appalled by the spectacle, and vowing “never again,” the international community comes together to turn Russia into a pariah state — limiting its access to international institutions, weakening its economy, draining the country of talent, and making Vladimir Putin’s position untenable even within his own circle.

Alarmed by their vulnerability, previously unreliable nations such as Germany commit to increasing defense spending and to taking NATO more seriously. In the West, the tales of Ukrainian bravery become the stuff of legend, and in Ukraine, President Zelensky cruises to reelection as the new symbol of national resolve. In casual conversation, “Zelensky” and “Putin” become avatars of Good and Evil, while “invading Ukraine” becomes colloquial shorthand for “doing something stupid.” Putin is forced out of office, and Russia reforms itself. The experiment is universally deemed to have been a failure, and we learn that, despite all odds, the world has changed substantially since the mid 20th century.

But, of course, there was no mistaken identity here. There was just an incoherent statement, a desperate attempt to rescue it, and then the sort of weak, petty, characterless, monomaniacal refusal to admit error that Kinzinger seems to believe that he is above, but which, increasingly, he personifies all too well.