Gonezo: How to Fumble a Congressional Seat
The former Ohio State star is about to learn the first rule of being Republican.
I probably would have had a few questions if you emerged from a time machine in Missoula, Montana on November 19th, 2005 and told my raucously drunken ass that Anthony Gonzalez, the man who had just saved Ohio State’s season against That Team Up North, would one day lose his Congressional seat over his vote to impeach President Donald Trump for inciting a putsch on the Capitol Building.
Apparently a lot can change in almost 16 years, because everything about that dark prophecy has come to fruition.
As far as Ohio’s 12 Republicans in Congress, I would rank Gonzalez at the top, though that’s like bragging about being the tallest person in a kindergarten class. But hey, it ain’t like Jim Jordan could jump that high, let alone maintain possession of the ball after the defender undercut him.
There was also the time that Gonzo spent an afternoon at the Memorial Tournament drinking Fireball with former teammate Kirk Barton. When Barton became drunk and unruly, Gonzo remembered he was running for Congress and disappeared like a ghost, leaving Delaware County Sheriff’s Deputies to put 10,000 volts of electricity to subdue the raging bull in the back of a cab.
He also kept former State Rep. Christina Hagan, an HVAC heiress and anti-abortion zealot, out of Congress. (Not satisfied with her loss, Hagan carpetbagged to OH-13 during the last election, where she lost to Tim Ryan and hopefully will never again appear in public life.)
That’s where the nice words end for Gonzo. In Congress, he has faithfully served the MAGA agenda by voting along Trump lines 85% of the time, which is why I was utterly shocked to see Gonzalez join nine other Republicans in voting to impeach Trump for his antics on Jan. 6th.
Gonzalez does not represent a swing district. He is only susceptible to a primary challenge from his right.
Gonzo is smart enough to know that. And while I respect his stand on principles to do the bare minimum in impeaching the diseased game show host, he’s about to get a taste of the cancel culture that Republicans love whining about.
Former troop and Trump aide Max Miller already bought a house in Rocky River and announced his intention to primary Gonzalez. It would normally be a question of how involved Trump got in a race that didn’t involve him, but he was quick to give the Almighty Orange Man endorsement on Day 1 of the campaign.
To make matters worse, Gonzalez has already become a flashpoint in what will be the long, brutal primary between Josh Mandel and Jane Timken for the Republican Senate nomination.
As chairman of the Ohio GOP, Timken put her thumb on the scale for Gonzalez in no small part because Hagan is an incompetent kook whose only real accomplishment comes from her family money.
Timken refused to condemn Gonzalez for his impeachment vote, saying instead she “wasn’t sure she would have voted that way.” Her tune changed yesterday when Mandel started to make an issue of Timken “defending” Trump’s impeachment. She now thinks Gonzo is unfit to serve and should resign:
George Orwell was, among other things, an Antisemite, plagiarist, and anti-Communist cop. But he did have a good line in 1984, that famous book he stole from Yevgeny Zamyatin:
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Donald Trump was such an effective president that he turned a Republican trifecta into a Democratic trifecta in four years. He was incompetent albeit funnier than literally every Republican politician in my lifetime.
But he is The Party. And like the mafia bosses he aspires to be, loyalty only cuts one way. Voting with him 85% of the time is not enough. He does crimes in broad daylight and he expects to get away with them, and I don’t blame him considering he had to be elected president before New York tax authorities decided to look into the cartoon villain that ran tax scams and did insurance fraud right under the nose.
Gonzo did not reject the evidence of his eyes and ears from the insurrection on Jan. 6th. And a man as petty as Trump can’t abide by that. Whereas Mike Pence can slink back to Indiana to eat dinner with the wife he calls “mother,” Gonzo has turf to defend.
But hey, this is the kind of party that Gonzo got into bed with. His colleagues are proven to be ruthless careerists who threw him under the bus at the first opportunity.
To them, principles are for suckers who are too dumb to do what it takes to gain and maintain power in a dog-eat-dog country like the land of the free and the home of the brave. Gonzo stood on his principles and due to the insanity of Republican primary voters, he will lose on his principles, too.
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