Can We Please Stop Lionizing Liz Cheney?

One ‘principled stand,’ and everyone immediately forgets her grotesque voting record and family history

I recently got into a few episodes of Veep and am loving how they portray the shallowness with which Washington operates. Everything is optics, calculating, and groveling to donors while pretending to stand with voters. There’s more authenticity in an episode of the Kardashians than there is in American politics.

But the Republican Party is in a weird spot; it’s been hijacked by an ego-maniacal game show host who has a direct line of communication with the voters.

The base completely slid out from under the Bushs and Paul Ryans and Mitt Romneys and landed squarely in the lap of one Donald J. Trump. All those years of dog-whistles and railing against the government left fertile ground for a media-created fake billionaire to ride in, break all the rules, and take the reins of the party as crowds echoed, ‘Build that wall!’

They completely laid the groundwork themselves and are now scrambling to maintain his ego, satisfy the base, and still steer the nation for the benefit of their Wall Street and military contractor campaign financiers.

Trump has the full support of the die-hard red state voters, so he remains a king-maker. Of the ten Republicans that voted to impeach him, eight are going to be gone — four of whom are not seeking to run again.

Candidates endorsed by The Orange Menace haven’t won all of their primaries, but the track record is good, and they just took down Liz Cheney, who was once the number three Republican in the House.

But one of the weird phenomena of the Trump era has been the rebranding of right-wing extremists and war criminals. If they don’t immediately bend a knee to Donald, pundits give them standing ovations for their bravery and morals.

Freaking Democrats are writing glowing eulogies like history started on January 6th, 2021, but Liz and the Cheney family have voting and criminal records that rival any dark figure from American history.

How the hell does everyone forget that so quickly?

One of the weird phenomena of the Trump era has been the rebranding of right-wing extremists and war criminals. If they don’t immediately bend a knee to Donald, pundits give them standing ovations for their bravery and morals.

Here’s a crazy sentence: Nixon, Bush, Reagan, Dick Cheney, and Mitt Romney are not American heroes. In many ways, well-spoken Republicans are the more dangerous operators because they have the same political beliefs as Trump, but they’re more astute politicians that know how the hide their true intentions.

The Don is so grotesque that nice suburban liberals actually remember that droning innocent civilians is a horrific crime. When Team Blue gets in power and does the same thing, they disengage, preferring to buy the line that it’s all in the name of ‘freedom.’

Trump truly broke the minds of most Blue Dog Democrats. In their blinding hatred, they look angelically upon Republican figures that are just as gruesome on paper but have nicer tweets.

That’s what we’re seeing with Liz Cheney.

The bar is so freaking low that believing election results makes liberals get teary-eyed witnessing the integrity, principle, and courage.

How do they completely ignore the fact that Liz Cheney supported Trump’s 2020 election campaign and, while in Congress, voted with him 93% of the time?

Trump and Cheney have a 99% overlap in their ideology. Liz is just more gentle on a mic, didn’t believe ‘the big lie,’ and thought storming the capital building wasn’t a bitchin’ cool move.

Not to mention she used her freaking father in a campaign ad — seriously. You know, the former vice president and the guy at the helm during the torture program, multiple invasions, mass surveillance, and all-around lead figure in the war on terror that has killed up to six million people.

He and Bush should be behind bars; not rebranded as resistance heroes.

Unironically putting that war criminal in a campaign ad should cost one their reelection bid.

Obviously, the candidate to replace her will probably be worse. The Republican Party is going full mask-off these days and more or less saying they’re a party of white Christian nationalism.

But just because Harriet Hageman will be more radical does not mean Liz Cheney is a legend.

How on earth are seemingly intelligent people like Robert Reich writing these glowing pieces and pushing her to run for president? I want to reach down, hold his tiny shoulders, look into his eyes, and repeat, “she has the same ideology as Donald” until we’re both locked in a hypnotic dance, and he snaps out of whatever anti-Trump-river-blind-voodoo trap he’s in.

Should we cheer the loss? Maybe. Because liberals can actually see the threat that is coming from the Boeberts and Marjorie Taylor Greenes but somehow skip past the part where Romney, Cheney, and Pence have the exact same ideology, and instead call for them to get buildings named in their honor.

But Cheney losing shouldn’t feel like a victory at all. The work is not done.

It does show what a weird place the nation and the Republican Party are, and how freaking ridiculous and blind the Democrats are in 2022.

At a minimum, let’s not allow these corrupt purveyors of violence and bigotry to get rebranded as heroes simply because Donald is an even worse loose cannon psychopath.