Liz Cheney Is Only Good For Trolling
So long as she still votes the way she does, her commitment to democracy is limited and any suggestion otherwise is too damn generous.
Aware of how cults function, Liz Cheney may have never planned to lose her seat in Congress to a primary challenger from her own party, but she was prepared for the inevitable when it happened last week.
And as expected, she cited her refusal to do the unconscionable as the reason behind her defeat.
“The path was clear,” Cheney explained with respect to the only plausible path to reelection.
“But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic. That was a path I could not and would not take.”
So she lost by 30 points to Harriet Hageman, her Donald Trump-backed challenger.
I watched parts of her concession speech — emphasis on parts because while I do find what she’s been up to since the Jan. 6 insurrection to be useful and important work, people tripping over themselves to lavish her with so much praise — about protecting democracy no less — need to get a grip.
In her speech, Cheney invoked Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant. It’s a little hubristic, but I understand this was her moment so she might have felt compelled to go for it and secure as many donations for her new political action committee. I get it, but Republican invocations of MLK are vomit-inducing for reasons that should be obvious. I’ll let her have the civil war nods, though, since so many on the hard right are openly begging for a rematch.
But I haven’t forgotten about Cheney’s defense of torture, her xenophobia, or how she even came to political prominence — using the Cheney name and building a following by feeding anti Obama rhetoric to a predominantly racist Fox News audience.
Cheney continues to vote against abortion, voting rights, and a litany of other issues that put her voting record closer to the Confederacy than 2022.
This is the person that deserves so many national news segments about her commitment to democracy?
She may be now trying to work on fighting back many of the forces driving our current political chaos, but her lingering reluctance to acknowledge her role in helping create it makes her political usefulness only go so far.
People who complain about Trump’s damage to American democracy without holding equal hostilities towards the GOP’s long-standing push of voter suppression laws can be helpful but remain hypocritical.
Unfortunately, in our media ecosystem, dominated by white journalists who don’t care about the voting rights of Black people in a meaningful way as evidenced by coverage, that doesn’t matter so even a little opposition goes a long way.
This does not discount Cheney’s bravery in serving on the Jan. 6 committee. It has put her life in danger and she did not have to choose to play a role much less such a dominant one. Still, when you see so many people that look at you being consistently minimized in our political discourse, it is frustrating to watch someone be depicted as a hero for finally being on the right side of an issue.
Yes, I am glad that after never missing an opportunity to attach herself to then-President Trump for political favor, Liz Cheney turned on him after he sent a violent mob to storm the Capitol and potentially kill members of Congress.
Everyone should turn on the person that tried to have them murdered in a coup.
It’s pathetic how many people feel otherwise, but as Cheney noted in her speech, “This primary election is over, but now the real work begins.”
Last Wednesday, she told NBC’s Today show that she is “thinking about” running for president and will make a decision in “the coming months.”
She has about as much of a shot at winning that nomination as Bobby Brown does, but if it means she’ll get to sanctimoniously talk about saving democracy while badmouthing Kevin McCarthy, Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley, and Ted Cruz, I hope her rich friends gives her the seed money she needs. I won’t be giving her anything. If I ever gave money willingly to a Cheney, please sound the fraud alert.
No matter how she cash her publicity tour and work on the January 6 committee goes, her plan of playing Trump foiler has potential hiccups — like the Republican National Committee trying to prevent a direct confrontation between her and Dear Leader.
“It sounds like the [Republican National Committee]’s already trying to find ways to keep you out,” ABC News’s Jonathan Karl told Cheney in a Sunday interview on This Week.
“I can understand why they would not want me on a debate stage with Donald Trump,” she responded. “I would imagine Donald Trump isn’t too interested in that either.”
I don’t know if she will be successful in her plans to light Donald Trump on fire in a debate, but as far as her revenge tour against Trump and the GOP goes, she may not permanently squash Trump’s political influence, but at least she is trying to deal irreparable damage to it by blocking his ability to return to elected office with what little power she has.
Even if I don’t think she’s democracy’s savior, I can at least appreciate her effort to be one of its most useful trolls.
