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Just a day after a New Jersey column referred to Tom Kean Jr. as Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy’s “acolyte,” he’s being burned again in local press for his slavish devotion to the two men.
Read the full column, “Tom Kean Jr. should break his silence on GOP authoritarian extremism” with highlights below:
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He [Kean] obviously, however, is cowed by the possible reaction of his opponents in June’s primary regarding any criticisms he may make of the GOP neo-fascist wing. Accordingly, Kean has maintained a practice of silence on the most extremist Republican authoritarian statements, best exemplified by his recent failure to comment on the Republican National Committee resolution seeking to protect individuals engaged in the Trumpian seditious conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. The resolution described these traitorous lawbreakers as participants in “legitimate political discourse.”
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The latest incident involving Greene and Gosar is an inflection point for the Kean campaign in two respects.
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Kean would lose no support from the national Republican establishment nor even the Trumpist keepers of the flame if he followed McCarthy’s lead and repudiated AFPAC, Greene, and Gosar. Yet I have yet to see Kean do anything to take advantage of the propitious opportunity.
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The second aspect of this Kean campaign inflection point was Greene’s antisemitic outburst the day after the conference. She derided her critics as “the Pharisees in the Republican Party,” referring to an ancient group of Jewish leaders whom Jesus called hypocrites.
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There is still time before the June primary for Tom Kean Jr. to abandon his politics of appeasement of the neo-fascist authoritarian Republican wing, a faction that threatens the future of both the GOP and American democracy. Such continuing appeasement would constitute a renunciation of the Kean pro-democracy, pro-tolerance traditions incorporated in his father’s book, The Politics of Inclusion. An abdication of the virtues of the politics of inclusion is too high a price for Kean to pay in pursuit of his ambitions.
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