Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 01:46 pm
It took a man like Trump to bring the progressive left and the arch-conservative Liz Cheney and family (likely the Bushes, too) together. In a lesson, we would do well to remember, Cheney and Kinzinger (and Romney in other contexts) have proven that a politician can hold solid, even extreme, conservative beliefs, and yet line up alongside us when the country is on the line. Additionally, though there certainly are times when conservative ideology plays to racists, fiscal conservatives (of Cheney’s type) need not be the object of our disdain, merely an opponent.
The above is mentioned because if we are to yank the truth out of the Republicans regarding their role – all of them – in the events after the November 2020 election, it will because a member of one of the country’s most powerful conservative families (backed by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney) dug her heels in and decided to work for Nancy Pelosi rather than against her when the issue was democracy itself. Country over party.
As the Select Committee really picks up momentum and the bombs continue to drop, Cheney penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed that reads almost as a warning, a promise, and an invitation, to join the right side of history. The truth is about to come out.
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Cheney begins by shaming the party with what they all know. From the WSJ:
“Republicans used to advocate fidelity to the rule of law and the plain text of the Constitution. In 2020, Mr. Trump convinced many to abandon those principles. He falsely claimed that the election was stolen from him because of widespread fraud. While some degree of fraud occurs in every election, there was no evidence of fraud on a scale that could have changed this one.”
She then lays out that without regard to what they say in interviews, they know they are lying (with the possible exception of the Gohmertz’s, Taylor-Greene’s, Cawthorn’s, et. al. who may be so stupid they do actually believe what they say):
“Almost all members of Congress know this — although many lack the courage to say it out loud. Mr. Trump knew it too, from his own campaign officials, from his own appointees at the Justice Department, and from the dozens of lawsuits he lost. Yet, Mr. Trump ignored the rulings of the courts and launched a massive campaign to mislead the public.
And then the warning and promise, that for all Trump’s bluster and Jordan’s pompous talk, they wouldn’t back down:
“Those who do not wish the truth of Jan. 6 to come out have predictably resorted to attacking the process — claiming it is tainted and political, our hearings will show this charge to be wrong. We are focused on facts, not rhetoric, and we will present those facts without exaggeration, no matter what criticism we face.
Cheney (more so than Kingzinger) brings invaluable credibility to the Select Committee. She represents unapologetic legacy GOP power from an age when GOP policies were intolerable, but a guy like McCain and Biden could take foreign trips as best friends, or – hell, a guy like Lindsey Graham could do a sixty second, tear-filled, ode to Joe Biden being “as good a man as one can find.
We didn’t know it then, but it was a better political time. We shouldn’t forget it in the future, should the forces for good in the Committee win out. With winners like Vice Chair Cheney and Chairman Thompson, they likely will. The MAGAs are now on notice.
@JasonMiciak believes a day without learning is a day not lived. He is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is a Canadian-born dual citizen who spent his teen and college years in the Pacific Northwest and has since lived in seven states. He now enjoys life as a single dad of a young girl, writing from the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He loves crafting his flower pots, cooking, and currently studies philosophy of science, religion, and non-math principles behind quantum mechanics and cosmology. Please feel free to contact with any concerns.
