The Joke's on Both of Them [Joe Mannix]

A delightful little piece of political news broke yesterday and it was largely missed thanks to the Speaker Showdown. Former Representative Adam Kinzinger (NT-IL) will be joining CNN - the last bastion of straight-shooting reporting - as a senior political commentator. CNN wants people to know about this and because they're perfectly aware of just how narrow their own reach is, they announced it on Twitter:

Join us in welcoming @AdamKinzinger to CNN as a Senior Political Commentator. Welcome to CNN, Adam! https://t.co/hjP7alMnqa pic.twitter.com/LFJhoWmXn9

— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) January 5, 2023

Earlier this week, Kinzinger did an interview with Dana Bash that was clearly a final audition. He hits the high points. He treats CNN like it's a real outfit, he toes the line about "Our Democracy (tm)," he engages in generous quantities of Trump bashing, he wishcasts about prosecution, and laces into the non-Uniparty wing of the GOP. This was nice:

BASH: What does it say about the future of your party, the Republican party, that Marjorie Taylor Green and people like her are kind of ascendant and the Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheneys of the world are no longer in the Congress?

KINZINGER: I think it says to me that the Republican party is not the future of this country unless it corrects. Right. Unless there's a change. Because I gotta tell you, if you think of a successful America in 20 years, that's not going to be an America based on what Marjorie Taylor Green wants or based on what some of these radicals want. The only way this country can succeed is if we learn to work together.

You'll find the full video below if you care to watch it, but it can be distilled easily:
Uniparty Yesterday, Uniparty Today, Uniparty Forever.

In other words, it's business as usual for Adam Kinzinger. He'll just be doing his grandstanding from a CNN studio instead of the House of Representatives.

He - and CNN - will be disappointed. Kinzinger's stage at CNN is much smaller than his stage on the January 6th committee. CNN has picked up a token Republican that is almost universally despised and, more important, disrespected by everyone who isn't already in CNN's audience. Bringing the Great Kinzinger over isn't going to dislodge anyone from MSNBC's audience and pull them over to CNN. Kinzinger will convince nobody of anything other than how craven he and CNN are in arranging for his absurdly rapid shift from corrupt politics to corrupt official media.

Back when the mainframe computer market was starting to contract, there were a lot of mergers in that industry. The players started buying each-other to hold on to market share and stave off their own collapses. This phenomenon was dubbed "dinosaurs mating" by some observers.

This is a "dinosaurs mating" scenario for CNN and Kinzinger. Nobody cares about either of them. Nobody wants either of them. They have only each other, and they make for lousy company.

posted by Open Blogger at 12:15 PM

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