Ten out of 207 Republicans? Maybe if Trump's mob had found Pence and hanged him, like they were chanting about, there would have been a full dozen.
Well, it does make you curious about the ten, and it's a small enough number to read up on in one night.
Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, has by far the highest profile. She of course is the daughter of Dick Cheney, W's vice president, and is behind only Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise in the House Republican pecking order. She represents the entire state of Wyoming, whose population is less than that of almost all other congressional districts. Trump won Wyoming by 70 to 27 percent. Her statement explaining her vote reads in part:
The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.
Her Republican colleagues are already moving to strip her of her leadership role in the House of Representatives.
Adam Kinzinger represents Illinois' 16th congressional district—western exurbs of Chicago and the city of Rockford. The district twice voted for Trump by double-digit margins. He was first elected in 2010 with 57 percent of the vote, and has never received less than that in any of his reelections. He's a former Air Force pilot. Reading through the summary of his political views in Wikipedia, it appears I agree with him about precisely one thing: Trump. On the day after the attack on the Capitol, he called for the president's removal via the 25th Amendment. He was interviewed about his impeachment vote on this evening's PBS News Hour. Judy Woodruff asked whether it had been a hard decision. He answered that it had not.
John Katko represents New York's 24th congressional district, which stretches along the southern shore of Lake Ontario and includes the city of Syracuse. Biden carried the district, as did Hillary Clinton. The Cook Political Report's PVI for the district is D+3. Katco, a lawyer, was first elected in 2014 after having served as an Assistant US Attorney in Syracuse, where he headed the organized crime division. His reelection race in 2018, which he won by 5 points, was his closest. In 2020 he had a rematch against the same Democratic challenger, Dana Balter, a professor at Syracuse University, and this time he beat her by 10 points. His political views are moderate and, apparently, a good fit for the district: he's opposed to abortion but has been critical of efforts to repeal Obamacare, and he's co-sponsored a bill extending the protections of the Civil Rights Act to LGBT people. He was the first Republican to announce he'd vote to impeach. One of his former interns now works as a Capitol Hill police officer and was admitted to hospital after being severely beaten by the mob on January 6.
Fred Upton's district is Michigan's 6th. It's in the southwest corner of the state, bordered by Lake Michigan on the west and Indiana on the south, biggest town is Kalamazoo. Trump carried the district twice, by 8 points in 2016 and by 4 points in 2020. Upton probably qualifies as a "career politician." He's been in the Congress for almost 30 years and before that worked in the Office of Management and Budget during the Reagan administration. He announced his intention to vote for impeachment on Twitter this morning:
Today the President characterized his inflammatory rhetoric at last Wednesday's rally as "totally appropriate," and he expressed no regrets for last week's violent insurrection at the US Capitol. . . . I would have preferred a bipartisan, formal censure rather than a drawn-out impeachment process. I fear this will now interfere with important legislative business and a new Biden Administration. But it is time to say: Enough is enough. . . . I will vote to impeach.
Upton is now the first US representative to have voted for the impeachment of two presidents, Clinton and Trump.
Jaime Herrera Beutler, 42, is beginning her sixth term representing Washington's 3rd congressional district, which runs along the border with Oregon from the Pacific Ocean to the central part of the state. Trump carried the district twice, by seven points against Clinton and then by four against Biden. She was first elected, with 53 percent of the vote, in 2010 when the seat became open after the Democratic incumbent retired. Redistricting after the 2010 census extended the district somewhat farther east and made it more Republican: in all but one of her reelections (2018), she's won by a double-digit margin, most recently by 13 points. Her statement supporting impeachment may be read here. Although Democrats and the impeachment article itself stress Trump's "incitement" of his supporters at the rally preceding the assault on the Capitol, Herrera Beutler is plainly more distressed by his actions (or inaction) while the attack was in progress and the statement he recorded afterwards in which he said the rioters were "special" and "we love you."
Funny, when you type the first few letters of these names into Google, the wizards in the ether immediately guess who you're looking for. I bet it was different yesterday. You do have to get to the "d" in "Fred" before getting a list headed by Fred Upton, just ahead of Freddie Mercury, which would probably amuse Fred Upton, unless he doesn't know about Freddie Mercury, a distinct possibility. The remaining five are Dan Newhouse of Washington, Peter Meijer of Michigan, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio (a former Buckeye football player and Indianapolis Colt), Tom Rice of South Carolina, and David Valadao of California. I'm aborting this mission. You can read about them in Wikipedia, or wherever, as well as here: the links are to their Wikipedia bios. Tom Rice is second to Tom Brady among Google's favorite Toms, but I think he could move up were he to say that the Earth is warming and the greenhouse effect is to blame.
Comments