As a Liberal Woman, I’m in Awe of Liz Cheney

Her courage should serve as an inspiration for women around the world.

As a woman, I’m in awe of Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney.

And as an American who is pro-choice, anti-gun, and considers same-sex marriage as a human right, I never thought I’d say that about someone as red-blooded as her.

After all, this is a woman who supported former president Donald Trump 93% of the time, even when his Access Hollywood video surfaced.

She also celebrated the overturning of Roe vs. Wade by praising the Supreme Court for placing abortion decisions in the hands of the states.

That’s enough to turn off any liberal woman, but hear me out.

She stands by her principles no matter what

On Tuesday, Cheney lost the Wyoming primary to Trump-backed Harriet Hageman by a big margin. Just two years ago, she had won by 73% of the vote.

I’m pretty sure she knew it was coming.

Cheney has been her party’s most vocal critic of Donald Trump since the beginning of 2021, a position that got her removed from leadership by the House Republican Caucus and expelled by her party in Wyoming.

But she kept fighting despite threats against her and she, along with nine other Republicans, went on to support his second impeachment.

Then when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked her to join the House select committee investigating the January 6th attack, it was a no-brainer.

She accepted the offer right away because she knew her participation in the committee would make the committee bipartisan.

She said to CNN:

If I have to choose between maintaining a seat in the House of Representatives or protecting the constitutional republic and ensuring the American people know the truth about Donald Trump, I’m going to choose the Constitution and the truth every single day.

Here’s a woman willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good at a time when the Democratic party and the GOP have never been this divided.

On the other hand, her opponent Hageman was once a Never Trumper who turned.

Throughout the election, she promoted Trump’s false claim of voter fraud, claiming she has been misled by “lies the Democrats and Liz Cheney’s friends in the media.”

Her whole election was based on calling out Cheney for not paying attention to the gas crisis and food prices, “things people of Wyoming care about,” branding her as a disloyal outsider.

In other words, Cheney’s crime is — as talk show host Trevor Noah put it so eloquently — that “she wouldn’t stop talking about the one time a deranged man tried to overthrow American democracy.”

Right.

Many Republicans have preceded her, flipping sides and vowing allegiance to their Führer. Just recently, they, along with conservative news media, echoed Trump’s condemnation of the FBI for searching his estate.

In this political climate of male-dominated MAGA cult, you’ve got to admire a lone woman who refuses to stay silent and vows she’ll “fight hard to ensure Donald Trump is never anywhere close to the Oval Office ever again.”

No woman or man in the Republican party has been as brazen to expose the role Trump and his minions played in the violent attempt to overthrow Joe Biden’s election.

So violent that five people died, including an officer.

In June, she gave a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute and said Republicans “cannot both be loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution.”

“We must choose. At this moment,” she urged her own party.

In her concession speech, she once again did the same:

Tonight, 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.

She’s a woman of principle with a strong sense of right and wrong, something completely lacking in the current GOP.

Her mission is to empower women

In June of this year, Cheney in a speech at the Reagan Presidential library said as the crowd laughed and applauded:

Let me also say this to the little girls and the young women who are watching tonight: these days, for the most part, men are running the world and it is really not going that well.

Tell me about it.

And in her closing argument at the January 6 Select Committee Hearing, Cheney wore the symbolic suffragist color of white to commemorate the Women’s Suffrage Movement.

As a privileged American woman, I forget how much our ancestors fought to ensure our freedom, something many women are still struggling with globally. Cheney reminded us of the historical significance of the room where witnesses gave their testimony:

In this room in 1918, the Committee on Women’s Suffrage convened to discuss and debate whether women should be granted the right to vote.

This room is full of history, and we on this committee know we have a solemn obligation not to idly squander what so many Americans fought and died for.

Other witnesses like Sarah Hutchinson, former Trump White House aide, also wore white during her testimony and Cheney praised her for her bravery:

She knew all along that she would be attacked by President Trump and by the 50, 60 and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege.

Cheney understands that the future of politics lies in empowering young women. She herself has been subjected to a barrage of slings and arrows by the male-dominated GOP.

She intuitively knows that women have the power to change America’s political climate.

I totally agree. Women are tough and naturally adept at thinking with their hearts, and thus less likely to let money, power, or fame blind them.

She’s not a typical Republican

I don’t agree with many of her policies, like her stance on abortion. If she’s an advocate for women, then it’s only natural that women should make the decision about whether to keep the baby, not the state.

She also voted to replace and repeal Obamacare and says waterboarding is a legitimate way to punish criminals.

What I like about her, though, is she doesn’t let her label as a conservative Republican prevent her from embracing policies typically rejected by her party.

She was one of the only 14 Republicans who voted for the most wide-ranging gun control bill approved in nearly 30 years for which she was blasted by Hageman.

Then nine years ago, there was a falling out with her only sister, who is gay and married with children, because of her opposition to same-sex marriage.

But then she had a change of heart. In an interview with 60 Minutes, she said:

I was wrong. I was wrong. I love my sister very much. I love her family very much.

This is an issue that we have to recognize, you know, as human beings — that we need to work against discrimination of all kinds in our country, in our state. Nobody should feel unsafe. Freedom means freedom for everybody.

Then her sister responded in a Facebook post:

It took a ton of courage to admit that she was wrong back in 2013 when she opposed marriage equality. That is something few politicians would ever do.

Exactly.

In the last decade alone, how many politicians have you seen publicly apologize for their mistakes?

She’s still a hardcore Republican, though. She voted against the 2021 Equality Act to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Still, I think Liz Cheney is a positive force in politics, especially at a time when we desperately need a bipartisan hero. She gets it, something that is undeniably missing in the Republican party.

Her continuous message to her Republican colleagues is loud and clear:

When you look at the spread of mistrust and spread of disinformation, you know silence enables it. Silence enables the liar and silence helps it spread. So the first thing you have to do is to say no, I’m not going to accept that we’re going to live in a post-truth world.

She’s someone who won’t stop until justice is served.

Now, that’s a woman I can stand by.