Liz Cheney, who rightly eviscerates the insurrectionist in exile, comes with many caveats.
She told Fox News yesterday that Republicans should renounce Trumpism and become “the party of truth” – which was a tad ironic, given all the serial lies her dad told to con us into the Iraq war. She also said that Republicans should renounce MAGA racism because “we are the party of Lincoln” – which was a tad squirm-worthy, given the fact that the modern GOP has feasted on racism ever since Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” exploited white flight from the Democratic party.
But put your hands together for Cheney. The embattled third-ranked House Republican deserves some plaudits for signaling that the imminent Senate trial (which starts tomorrow) is not just about the ousted demagogue. The GOP itself is also on trial. The Senate’s Republicans will soon tell us whether believe in the Constitution and the peaceful transfer of power (as do most Americans) – or whether they endorse fascist violence stoked by a cult of personality.
That should be a no-brainer, of course, but this is the GOP we’re talking about. So, naturally, it’s inexplicably split on that crossroads issue. Cheney has been censured back home by the Wyoming GOP for having the temerity to vote yes on impeachment after assessing the mountain of incitement evidence. In the House chamber, 61 of her colleagues voted (in vain) to remove her from party leadership – while only 11 voted to strip lunatic Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee seats.
And as the Senate prepares for trial, there’s no indication that 17 Republicans will do their duty for democracy. Court documents clearly show that the MAGA rabble was stoked by Trump’s incendiary Big Lie – heck, they say in their own words that Trump invited them to storm the Capitol – but the MAGA virus has reduced those senators’ spines to the consistency of guacamole.
Cheney is a traditional establishment Republican – even though President Biden currently has landslide popularity and support for his early moves, Cheney assails his “far left governing” – but at least she has some steel in her backbone. She told Fox News: “I stand firmly (for impeachment). We have never seen that kind of an assault by a president of the United States on another branch of government and that can never happen again…What we already know does constitute the gravest violation of oath of office by any president in the history of the country…The single greatest threat to our republic is a president who would put his own self interest above the Constitution, above the national interest.”
As we look toward the 2022 midterms (sigh, must we?), the GOP’s intramural war will be fascinating. Talk about an identity crisis: a huge wing of the party, arguably a majority, will remain beholden to the only president in history who ever lost the popular vote twice, and will indeed seek his imprimatur in those midterm races; and another wing of the party, the sane wing, will try – perhaps in vain – to scrape Trump off their footwear. We’ll see the same pattern in the nascent GOP jockeying for the ’24 presidential nod.
Cheney, on the air yesterday, sought to scrape with all deliberate speed: “We have to really take a hard look at who we are and what we stand for and what we believe in. Somebody who has provoked an attack in the United States capital…is a person who does not have a role as a leader of our party going forward. We have to make sure that we are able to convey to the American voters (that) we are the party of responsibility, we are the party of truth, that we actually can be trusted to handle the challenges this nation faces – like Covid – and that’s going to require us to focus on substance and policy.”
As for the racism, the anti-Semitism, the serial lying, the violence, and the QAnon luancy, Cheney simply says: “That’s not who we are as a party.”
For the sake of our sick two-party system, let’s hope she has the troops to prove it. To borrow a phrase from her father, if establishment Republicans like Cheney can somehow purge the Trumpists, many of us would greet them as liberators.