How Many GOP Candidates Measure Up To Liz Cheney?
You don't need all your fingers on one hand to figure it out.
Because of her politics— she fought against climate change legislation, she fought to overturn Obamacare, she fought against same sex marriage, she fought to deny abortion rights to women, she fought to water down voting rights, she fought to kill the Dream Act, she fought to keep assault weapons legal— Liz Cheney isn’t at the top of my list to run this country. She is so deeply conservative, her votes in Congress during Donald Trump’s presidency aligned with Trump more than 92% of the time.
But because of her principles, Liz Cheney is at the very top to serve as an ethical role model in the midst of our insufferable abyss. The current crop of aspirants to lead today’s version of the Republican Party could stand to take a crash course from her. She is a role model for morality, for integrity, for heroism. She epitomizes the definition of a hero: she sacrificed her career to help save democracy.
In her leading role last year on the January 6th Committee, Liz Cheney spoke truth to the power of her political party: "I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.” As author Celia Viggo Wexler put it in a commentary at the time, “She’s been that rara avis (Latin for ‘rare bird’), a Republican lawmaker with both a conscience and a backbone.”
A rare bird indeed. Cheney partnered with nine other praiseworthy Republicans in the House, along with every Democrat, when they voted after January 6th to impeach the president on the charge of “incitement of insurrection.” But as the adage says, no good deed goes unpunished. She knew when she took her immutable stand that it would not sit well with her conservative colleagues in Congress, or with the voters back home in Wyoming. Then-minority leader Kevin McCarthy fired her from her leadership position in the House, then those Wyoming voters fired her from the House itself. Had she taken a more nuanced position, she might still be at the top of her party. But instead, by acting on her conscience and showing her backbone, she became a pariah. She chose patriotism over partisanship.
There is a lesson in that for all the Republicans now vying to somehow blow past Donald Trump in the presidential race and win their party’s nomination for the White House. The question is, which lesson have they learned? The lesson that says that principles should eclipse partisanship, no matter what the cost to your ambitions? Or the lesson that says, save your own skin and don’t get on the wrong side of Trump’s bull-headed base, no matter what the cost to your moral values?
Tonight, of those on stage in the GOP debate, we’ll likely find out.
Some already have staked out their claims. But only two of them have done it with a strong spine.
New Jersey’s former governor Chris Christie has pulled no punches: “The events around the White House from election night forward are a stain on our country’s history and a disgrace to the people who participated. This disgrace falls the most on Donald Trump.”
Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson has been equally unsparing: “Donald Trump’s actions on January 6 should disqualify him from ever being president again.”
As a personal aside, I’d say they are a little late to the party. Although Trump’s flagrant failings were on full display before he ever became president, both men endorsed him both times he ran. Liz Cheney admits, she voted twice for Trump herself. But still, better late than never.
As for the rest of the candidates? They’re trying to sweep Trump’s transgressions under the rug. They’re trying to turn the tables and make Joe Biden’s administration the culprit, not Trump. They’re trying to have it both ways. They’re trying not to suffer Trump’s wrath. Almost all of them.
Trump’s leading rival, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, has no kind words these days for his onetime mentor, but calls the indictments issued against him a case of “criminalizing political differences,” even “a mortal threat to a free society.” With positions like those, DeSantis hopes Trump’s base could learn to live with him if Trump can be dethroned.
South Carolina senator Tim Scott is trying to dance on the head of the same pin. He concedes that the charges against Trump are “serious” but also almost parrots DeSantis. The Justice Department is “weaponizing the law against political enemies” he claims, and says in a nod to Trump’s base of loyal believers, “We’re watching Biden’s D.O.J. continue to hunt Republicans while protecting Democrats.”
Scott’s fellow South Carolinian, former governor and U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, is walking the same thin line. She calls the federal indictments “prosecutorial overreach, double standards and vendetta politics.” Given the details of the 91 felony charges now leveled against Trump, calling them “prosecutorial overreach” might keep her from falling off the tightrope but like Scott and DeSantis and others, it undermines our faith in the system and trivializes the threats our democracy has endured, which is a disservice to every American.
Mike Pence, who was unswerving in his servile support of Trump during the four years he served as vice president, is no longer in Trump’s camp but still won’t come out swinging. “I’m not convinced that the president acting on bad advice of a group of crank lawyers that came into the White House in the days before January 6 is actually criminal,” he has opined. To his credit— or perhaps just in the interest of somehow separating himself from a man whose legal troubles continue to deepen— he subsequently has said, “Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”
Doug Burgum, North Dakota’s governor, has tried to sidestep the whole subject of the indictments, calling them a “distraction.” But at the same time, he said in a television interview, “People are very concerned about a double standard in this country. If we don’t believe that the D.O.J. is going to enforce the laws equally between the two political parties, that’s even more serious than the charges themselves.” Donald Trump, although he has put it more crudely, is saying the very same thing.
Of all the candidates, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, whose style echoes Trump’s, has been Trump’s most dependable defender. He blames President Biden for using “police power to arrest its political rivals,” and while some of the other candidates have said that if elected, they would consider pardoning Trump if he is convicted— several couch it in terms of being “best for the country”— Ramaswamy has urged all of them to pledge to pardon the ex-president because he’s the victim of a witch hunt.
Personally I wouldn’t choose any of these candidates against Joe Biden, whose presidency isn’t perfect but he has accomplished a lot and despite his age, if you’re really paying attention, he is still going strong. Like Liz Cheney, the Republicans in the race all would take the country in a direction I wouldn’t want to go. But from the standpoint of character, none holds a candle to the woman from Wyoming.
In her closing remarks with the January 6th committee, Cheney spoke words that every voter should consider when deciding who they want to lead them: “We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.” By that standard, most of today’s candidates probably are disqualified.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Gregg, I do not agree with all of Liz's positions as you have noted. But how refreshing is it that we had a politician who did the right thing? Someone with integrity over party. I would love to see her back in office, but for now, I doubt Wyoming voters would have the same courage she has.
Thanks Greg. Spot on right in every respect. To those who parrott “it’s unprecedented the way the gov’t has pursued trump the only response is a criminal as president is what’s unprecedented.