Tomorrow Is High Noon for Liz Cheney
It costs Democrats nothing to recognize integrity when we see it
The heat wave broke in western New England over the weekend: already I am thinking more clearly. I hope you are too. And as always, please:
Ever since she was expelled from the leadership of the Republican House caucus for insisting that Donald Trump be held accountable for his actions after the 2020 election, I have followed Congresswoman Liz Cheney (WY-01) closely. Her fall from a position that was expected to take her to the Speaker’s chair was a startling moment in American politics. And it is a story about courage we should tell our daughters and granddaughters.
Like many Democrats, I have come to appreciate Cheney, even though she and I have so many political differences it is hardly worth citing them. Yet, she has become a staunch ally in fighting illiberalism in a GOP that has essentially become an arm of the Trump corporation. And I admire her because she has demonstrated what personal integrity is: having the courage to fight for your principles even when you will pay dearly for it.
Where I grew up, it’s what we used to call character.
Lots of Republicans used to have character, but as a group these people have been driven out of office and out of the party. Incredibly, this purge accelerated after January 6, 2021. As a shaken Republican leadership backed down from holding Trump accountable for the January 6 insurrection, it quickly became clear that it was compulsory for even the most powerful and independent Republicans to get behind Trump’s stolen election narrative. Among the first principles to die in the GOP caucus in the days after J6 were freedom of thought and freedom of speech. Members of the Senate and House caucuses were no longer permitted to tell a factual story about the insurrection, or the role Trump played in leading it, without the sure knowledge that they would be primaried and pay for personal security for the indefinite future.
Cheney is a woman who knows how to follow the rules: she did it for years. In Congress, she voted with Trump 93% of the time. Until she recanted in 2021, Cheney opposed gay marriage: this created a family rift, since her sister Mary is a married lesbian. Cheney is about as anti-abortion as a person can get. She’s a national defense hawk, and a creature of the fossil fuel industry. She is pro-gun, and opposes enhanced background checks. Big business loves Liz Cheney.
But after November 3, 2020, Cheney decided to break some rules. When Trump said the election was stolen, she said no. When Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said it was time to move on from January 6, Cheney again said no. When the GOP made it mandatory to either embrace the lie of a stolen election, or—as many Republicans did—avoid the topic, prevaricate, and never, ever, say that it was a lie, Cheney said no, no, no.
It has been truly astonishing to watch Cheney choose, not just country over party, but her own honesty and integrity over a bright political future. This is because conservatism is her bedrock, and Cheney remembered something that her GOP colleagues chose, and still choose, to forget: being for law and order and protecting constitutional government are conservative values.
Cheney chose political death over dishonor. And it was a choice. It’s hard to imagine that she knew her own voters so little that she did not understand that coming out against Trump would put them in a rage. Almost 70% of Wyoming voters cast their ballots for Trump, a number that matches up with the percentage in that state who are registered Republican. And when Cheney cast her vote for impeachment in 2021, Harry Enten writes at CNN.com, Wyoming voters swiftly punished her. Her disapproval rating “went from 26% before her vote to impeach to 72% afterward.”
Perhaps there was no going back after her vote to impeach, but what impressed me was that Cheney didn’t even try, nor did she fade from the scene as so many anti-Trump Republicans did. Instead, she attacked. Cheney accepted Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to be the vice chair of the House Committee assigned to investigate Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection, a process that has pulled back the curtain on a failed coup d’etat designed and executed by a sitting president. And she has done a hell of a job on that committee, becoming somewhat of a cult figure among liberal women and men. Despite her hard-right past, 60% of Democrats, and 25% of independents now rate their view of Cheney as “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable.”
But Wyoming liberals can’t vote for Cheney in sufficient numbers to save her seat in Congress, and Cheney’s honesty is not winning Republican hearts and minds. In contrast, Harriet Hageman, her primary opponent, is a Trump sycophant, a liar, and a hypocrite. She is now a proud election denier who has embraced every conspiracy theory swirling around the 2020 presidential contest. Prior to the 2016 election, however, Hageman described the Former Guy as a bigot, joining Texas Senator Ted Cruz in a last-ditch effort to throw sand in the Trump Train’s gears. According to the New York Times, she “back[ed] doomed procedural measures at the party’s national convention aimed at stripping [Trump] of the presidential nomination he had clinched two months earlier.”
But Hageman, a former Cheney ally and a failed guernatorial candidate, has not only conveniently changed her mind about Trump. Like Cruz, she has also successfully buried her own past as someone who really did try to rig an election by stealing a nomination from the person who won it resoundingly.
Now Hageman has Trump’s endorsement and is all about election integrity. “Absolutely the election was rigged,” she told a crowd assembled by Natrona County Republican Women less than two weeks ago. “It was rigged to make sure that President (Donald) Trump could not get reelected. What happened in 2020 is a travesty. It should never happen again. We need to make sure our elections are free and fair.” She also told them that Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg “bought” the election, that the media was biased against Trump’s attempt to overturn it, and that “she does see President Joe Biden as the sitting president.”
That Hageman would succeed in a state that may be the most conservative in the union is no surprise. What is shocking is the historical takeaway: that the 2020 election conspiracy theory and unquestioned fealty to Donald Trump has completely redefined what it means to be conservative.
If you had asked me two years ago, I would have said Liz Cheney was the most conservative person I could identify in Congress. Perhaps because of this, she refused to go along with the redefinition of her political philosophy and her party by a thuggish autocrat and his enablers. Cheney was one of only ten Republicans to take that position, and all ten voted to impeach Trump after the insurrection. Of that group, four retired from Congress rather than face an angry, deluded electorate, three were defeated by primary challengers from the MAGA right, and two will be on the ballot in November.
Cheney is the last of the ten to have her fate decided and, barring a miracle, she is likely to lose tomorrow. Hageman is between 22 and 29 points ahead, depending on what poll you look at. And while I have heard rumors that Democrats are planning to re-register as Republicans so they can vote for her (you can do this up until election day in Wyoming), only 20% of the state’s voters are Democrats and about 18% are unaffiliated. That isn’t enough voters, unless Republicans get depressed and stay home.
So what’s next for Cheney? Lots of things: you can read about the possibilities here, which include speculation about a 2024 presidential run. Frankly, given the state of the GOP, I think she’s viable.
But me? I don’t want to imagine the future yet. Instead, I prefer to think about Liz Cheney as she is today: unbowed, unbroken, and uncompromised.
Short Takes:
Whole Foods has nice fruit and vegetables, but little tolerance for free speech: Josh Eidelson at Bloomberg reports on a struggle between employees and management over workers wearing items of clothing and masks adorned with the Black Lives Matter logo. “All told, Whole Foods terminated workers in at least six states for wearing BLM apparel, according to a complaint brought by the National Labor Relations Board, the federal body that adjudicates violations of workplace law,” Eidelson writes. The company has now drawn the scrutiny of the NLRB’s General Counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, who seeks a broader ruling allowing employees to express themselves freely at work. (August 15, 2022)
Five years after the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA, counter-terrorism experts Nicholas Rasmussen and Sarah Kenny reflect on the the clash between white power activists and civil society at Just Security. It was a wake-up call to federal agencies that they had neglected internal threats to the nation’s security. But the event also reminded Americans who believed that white supremacist violence was a relic of the past “that the work of defending this pluralistic democracy of unprecedented scale from ethnocentric and autocratic forces must be reborn with each new generation.” (August 12, 2022)
“Stop the Steal” isn’t a real campaign to reverse the 2020 election, political sociologist Theda Skocpol explains in an interview with The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey. It’s a metaphor for a more pervasive discontent on the right about the nature of power. Descended from the Tea Party, these activists “believe that urban people, metropolitan people—disproportionately young and minorities, to be sure, but frankly liberal whites—are an illegitimate brew that’s changing America in unrecognizable ways and taking it away from them,” Skocpol explains. “Stop the Steal is a way of saying that.” (August 12, 2022)
Brilliant essay. Had me choked up at the end — for a Cheney!
Claire, my response to Cheney is very similar to your response. I can remember when my conversations with conservative friends were valuable and important, they were about a belief and hope for a promise the EUA offered despite our differences. That the GOP has chosen to reject her because of her principles, because of her commitment to her specific understanding of the constitution, is an indictment not of her but them.