Bravo to Liz Cheney and her Stand

[Steve M. Galbraith]

This is a principled and courageous stand, one that likely ends her career in the Republican Party. Or the current manifestation of whatever the hell it is now. She could have tried to finesse this, to do a "McConnell"; but she didn't.

From her Washington Post op-ed: "The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution."

"Trump is seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work — confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law. No other American president has ever done this.…"

"The question before us now is whether we will join Trump’s crusade to delegitimize and undo the legal outcome of the 2020 election, with all the consequences that might have. While embracing or ignoring Trump’s statements might seem attractive to some for fundraising and political purposes, that approach will do profound long-term damage to our party and our country. Trump has never expressed remorse or regret for the attack of Jan. 6 and now suggests that our elections, and our legal and constitutional system, cannot be trusted to do the will of the people."

"History is watching.... Our children are watching. We must be brave enough to defend the basic principles that underpin and protect our freedom and our democratic process. I am committed to doing that, no matter what the short-term political consequences might be."

There is no defense for what Trump did and what he continues to do.

Full piece here (registration required): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/05/liz-cheney-republican-party-turning-point/

[Joe Elliott]

This is a principled and courageous stand, one that likely ends her career in the Republican Party. Or the current manifestation of whatever the hell it is now. She could have tried to finesse this, to do a "McConnell"; but she didn't.

From her Washington Post op-ed: "The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution."

"Trump is seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work — confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law. No other American president has ever done this.…"

"The question before us now is whether we will join Trump’s crusade to delegitimize and undo the legal outcome of the 2020 election, with all the consequences that might have. While embracing or ignoring Trump’s statements might seem attractive to some for fundraising and political purposes, that approach will do profound long-term damage to our party and our country. Trump has never expressed remorse or regret for the attack of Jan. 6 and now suggests that our elections, and our legal and constitutional system, cannot be trusted to do the will of the people."

"History is watching.... Our children are watching. We must be brave enough to defend the basic principles that underpin and protect our freedom and our democratic process. I am committed to doing that, no matter what the short-term political consequences might be."

There is no defense for what Trump did and what he continues to do.

Full piece here (registration required): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/05/liz-cheney-republican-party-turning-point/

 

[Joe Elliott]

If “Profiles in Courage” was written ten years from now, I think Lynne Cheney would have deserve a chapter on her.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

If “Profiles in Courage” was written ten years from now, I think Lynne Cheney would have deserve a chapter on her.

True. The Kennedys give out an annual "Profiles in Courage" award - it has a distinctly liberal view or perspective on "courage" - and Cheney deserves it for this year. Mitt Romney got it last year for his pro-impeachment/conviction vote against Trump.

The problem though is not just Trump and his crazy and dangerous views but his supporters who believe this nonsense. The conservative writer Jim Geraghty at National Review writes this today:

"Not only is Trump popular, but at least half of those who identify as Republican believe what he says, even in the face of mountains of counterevidence. The same Ipsos poll found that 55 percent of Republicans said the 2020 election was “the result of illegal voting or election rigging,” and the same percentage agreed with the statement, “The Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was led by violent left-wing protestors trying to make Trump look bad."

That last part is simply astonishing. Fifty-five percent of self-identified Republicans agreed that the January 6 riot was "led by violent left-wing protestors trying to make Trump look bad"? What?

Good lord. I'd be less shocked if they said they believed it was led by Martians.

And it's Liz Cheney not Lynne <g>. Lynne is her mother, the wife of Dick Cheney. I made the same mistake but corrected it.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

And columnist Peggy Noonan explains the "thinking" of the Congressional GOP today:

"They [i.e, the Congressional Republicans] know she [i.e., Cheney] is right. They know Mr. Trump lost the election and Mr. Biden won. Most of them know it’s not good if embittered generations of voters turn on the system and come to feel no fidelity to democratic outcomes. They just don’t want her to say it. They don’t want to antagonize constituents who believe the election was stolen. They think Ms. Cheney is doing so, pointlessly. They think the way out is to be quiet and hope the fever passes. Here is a fact of our current political life: The fever never passes. It has to be treated. By not pushing back they create more crazy."

"Be quiet and hope the fever passes." Yep, that's what they want to do. This is quite similar to the conservative movement in the 1950s when William F. Buckley confronted the Bircher far right who thought among other things that Eisenhower was a communist. You have to confront these ideas not wish them away.

The question is, who will be this generation's William F. Buckley?

To be sure, the Democratic party has a similar problem with this "woke" left movement who also reject the legitimacy of American institutions if they lose elections or don't control that institution. But that's another discussion for another day. And Republicans can't simply say, "What about the left"? That's not a response, that's a dodge.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

From today's Washington Post (5/8):

"Even if she [Cheney] is cast out of power in the House, she has made clear that she will not stop, promising to take her argument against Trump to the campaign trail in Wyoming, where he garnered 70 percent of the vote in 2020. She has told others that blocking Trump from leading the party is a fight she sees as just beginning, no matter how Wednesday’s vote goes."

If she truly thinks Trump is a danger, if she truly believes that the falsehoods about the legitimacy of the election must be challenged, if she truly believes that the Republican Party has to cleanse itself of these fantasies then what should she do? Just give in? Leave the party? Not fight for what she believes?

The problem isn't that Cheney is causing this split, is making controversial statements: the problem is that many Republicans consider her obviously true statements controversial. She's not causing the problem here, she's not preventing a healing from what happened that January 6th, she's not dragging the party back to that day: Trump is.

The fury then is directed not at Trump, not at what happened on January 6th, not as his statements about it and the election but at her.

As Yeats wrote: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst
                             Are full of passionate intensity."

 

[Jon Banks]

She’s no hero in my book.

Maureen Dowd on Cheney:

Let’s acknowledge who created the template for Trump’s Big Lie.

It was her father, Dick Cheney, whose Big Lie about the Iraq war led to the worst mistake in the history of American foreign policy. Liz, who was the captain of her high school cheerleading team and titled her college thesis “The Evolution of Presidential War Powers,” cheered on her dad as he spread fear, propaganda and warped intelligence.

From her patronage perch in the State Department during the Bush-Cheney years, she bolstered her father’s trumped-up case for an invasion of Iraq. Even after no W.M.D.s were found, she continued to believe the invasion was the right thing to do.

“She almost thrives in an atmosphere where the overall philosophy is discredited and she is a lonely voice,” a State Department official who worked with Liz told Joe Hagan for a 2010 New York magazine profile of the younger Cheney on her way up.

She was a staunch defender of the torture program. “Well, it wasn’t torture, Norah, so that’s not the right way to lay out the argument,” she instructed Norah O’Donnell in 2009, looking on the bright side of waterboarding.

She backed the futile, 20-year occupation of the feudal Afghanistan. (Even Bob Gates thinks we should have left in 2002.) Last month, when President Biden announced plans to pull out, Liz Cheney — who wrote a book with her father that accused Barack Obama of abandoning Iraq and making America weaker — slapped back: “We know that this kind of pullback is reckless. It’s dangerous.”

For many years, she had no trouble swimming in Fox News bile. Given the chance to denounce the Obama birther conspiracy, she demurred, interpreting it live on air as people being “uncomfortable with having for the first time ever, I think, a president who seems so reluctant to defend the nation overseas…”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/opinion/liz-cheney-donald-trump.html

[Richard Smith]

Liz Chaney?  Her father was responsible for the US intervening in a needless decades long war that cost thousands of US lives, countless of Iraqi lives (perhaps millions) and cost trillions of dollars.   All for nothing based on a fake narrative for a big payoff to Dick Cheney's cronies.  Did she ever condemn him in heroic role as the arbiter of right and wrong?  No?  But Trump is the devil because he doesn't play nice with others and holds them accountable for incompetence and corruption.