April 26, 2020
Justin Amash Should be Embarrassed.
By
Taylor Lewis
Not because Amash threw a temper tantrum and
jettisoned himself out of the Republican Party after unironically calling the President a despotic blowhard and feckless nebbish. And I don’t mean he should be shamefast over crowing for
Trump’s impeachment for actions he admits were not illegal, while never requesting the same removal of a president who blatantly
tromped on the law. Or even for hanging his libertarian-ish coequal, Rep. Thomas Massie, out to dry by refusing to join his
protest request for a quorum on the costly coronavirus-relief bill.
The Michigan congressman made his bones out of being a principled, if esoteric, gadfly. But, since he’s turned on the brusquest iconoclast to ever sit in the Oval Office, Amash has become not just a sometimes-darling of the left, but a stalwart to the irascible anti-Trump right.
Too bad the support doesn’t translate into politics’ all-important objective: running for office.
In the Bulwark, the hobby blog founded by neocon nepote Bill Kristol, outspoken Twitterers Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller urge Amash to do the right thing and not launch a presidential bid. “Amash is great. But a third-party run could help reelect Donald Trump,”
they warn. Amash
recently posted two tweets suggesting serious consideration of a White House run, possibly under the banner of the Libertarian Party.
Juvenile plaudits abound for Amash throughout the plea. Longwell and Miller describe him as “the only member of the Freedom Caucus who didn’t abandon everything” and as the only non-Democratic lawmaker to “talk openly about Donald Trump’s
racism,” as if adopting the left’s identity politics is a feather in his Tea Party-fashioned bicorn hat.
