MAGA goons are trying to convince Kid Rock to run for Congress
Seems like a bawitdabad idea.
Celebrities using their elevated public profiles to run for office is nothing new in this country; there’s Ronald Reagan, Sonny Bono, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, to name just a few of the higher profile examples. But it wasn’t until Donald Trump became president that the notion that anyone with even a modicum of notoriety could actually make it to office — no matter how grotesquely unqualified or simply grotesque — moved from outlying political anomaly to core animating principle of the Republican Party. In our current electoral cycle, we have former football star and spousal abuser Herschel Walker running for Senate in Georgia, Oprah-spawned quack Dr. Oz running for Senate in Pennsylvania, acclaimed poverty pornographer J.D. Vance making moves in Ohio, and now this: a movement from within the GOP Congressional Caucus reportedly trying to recruit 51-year-old Kid Rock to become the next United States congressman from Tennessee.
According to Friday morning’s Politico Playbook, an unnamed cadre consisting of “some MAGA members of Congress” has begun pushing Rock to capitalize on the fact that he owns a 27,000 square foot replica of the White House in Nashville in order to run for the GOP nomination for the state’s 5th District.
The push comes amidst a flurry of politics-adjacent activity from Rock, including a recent phone call with Trump, his old golf buddy, and the release of an unlistenable rah-rah conservative anthem called We The People (“Climb aboard this love boat / And rock that bitch up and down the coast”). Nor is this the first time Rock has flirted with a career in politics — in so much as launching a legally dubious “Kid Rock for Senate” concert tour can be considered a sincere flirtation.
There is, however, a perverse logic in any potential Kid Rock run for this iteration of the GOP. He is, after all, the textbook embodiment of the current Republican Party: a minimally talented wealth-born vulgarian who cosplays as an anti-authoritarian everyman while rubbing elbows with his fellow rich and powerfuls.
Which is all to say that if he is actually convinced to run for office, he likely won’t have to change a single thing about himself to coast into Congress.
