Former Representative Liz Cheney has made a name for herself as a critic of Donald Trump.
Cheney has been primarily focused on Trump’s role relating to the January 6th riot.
Cheney even served as the House select committee vice chair investigating January 6th.
At the beginning of the January 6th hearing, Cheney warned her GOP colleagues.
“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your honor will remain.”
In warning the GOP, Cheney instantly beatified herself to the left, who was desperate to amplify the voice of someone with right-wing credentials willing to critique Trump.
When Cheney lost reelection the following autumn, she became a martyr for the cause.
“For [criticizing Trump], [Cheney] was called a traitor. She lost her seat to a woman who wholeheartedly supported Trump (and whom Trump in return wholeheartedly supported.) To say Wyoming is Trump country is an understatement: Cheney got only about 29 percent of the GOP primary vote in 2022,” The Hill wrote.
Democrats Don’t Get It
Democrats have been struggling to understand Trump’s appeal for nearly a decade.
Democrats think the entire Republican voting bloc is deranged or simply stupid.
So, when someone like Cheney seems to defect in some respects, the Democrats rejoice and use the defection as validation of their perspective that Trump is untenable and that Republican voters are incompetent.
The sickest part, from my perspective, is how willing the Democrats are to absolve any sin in exchange for denouncing Trump.
Liz Cheney for example, has a deeply conservative record, is a bona fide war hawk, and is the progeny of the heinous Dick Cheney.
And while children should not be automatically guilty or automatically associated with the sins of their father, Liz Cheney embraced her father. One could argue she used nepotism to launch her political career in Dick Cheney-owned Wyoming.
So, if you’re going to roll like that, you’re going to get tagged with the sins of the father.
But independently of her father, who conned the American public into the Iraq War, Cheney was no peach. “Cheney is an arch-conservative,” wrote political scientist Lawrence R. Jacobs. “She’s a hard-edged, small government, lower taxes figure, and a leading voice on national defense.”
Journalist Jake Bernstein agreed. “Liz Cheney is a true conservative in every sense of the word and she’s only moderate in relation to the radicalism that has seized the Republican party.”
Democrats Need to Face Facts on Liz Cheney
And that’s all fine when considered in isolation. But if you’re a Democrat, Liz Cheney is not the sort of person you should be promoting. The fact that she decried Donald Trump should not qualify her to the Dems praise and worship.
No, Cheney is her father’s daughter; Cheney embraced a variety of Bush-Cheney vestiges/policies. For example, she opposed Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan; she has continued to promote the idea that there was a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq.
She voted against the repeal of the 2002 Authorization of Military Force. She opposed the no-first use nuclear policy. She opposed the JCPOA. Oh, and she opposed same-sex marriage.
Liz Cheney is bad news. And having the gall to say that Donald Trump is scum does not absolve Cheney from her unfortunate body of work. But maybe the Democrat’s willingness to look past Cheney’s body of work suggests that Cheney’s ideology is not all that far removed from the mainstream Democratic ideology.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor and opinion writer at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
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