In the latest example of how conservatism in the Republican party, in the many forms in which we've traditionally known it, has been almost completely consumed by what could somewhat anachronistically be called Trumpian protofascism, Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney has just lost the Republican primary in her state, falling to Harriet Hageman, a Donald Trump-backed crackpot. In the latest example of how far the Democrats have fallen under the hegemony of the Clintonite right, the Clintonites have tried to present the loathsome legislator as an heroic defender of the liberal democracy. In light of both of these developments and to put them into their proper context, a look at Cheney's career is in order (this is adapted from a Twitter thread I've written).
Liz Cheney is a toxic demagogue of the worst sort, a lying, hate-spewing reactionary bereft of any sense of decency or propriety. A monster. That's what she is and what she has always been.
Cheney supported--and still defends--both the invasion of Iraq by George Bush Jr., a policy in which her father Dick Cheney was intimately involved, and the lies Bush, Cheney and their underlings used to sell it.
Cheney defends the Bush Jr. regime's use of torture, accusing those who called it torture of "slander." When Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul questioned whether someone involved with the torture program should be CIA director, Cheney said he was "defending and sympathizing with terrorists."
In 2009, Cheney refused to denounce the "birthers" in her own party--the fringe, racist conspiracists pitching the idea that Barack Obama was actually born in Kenya and was ineligible to be president--and blamed Obama for their existence.
When, in Nov. 2013, Cheney was attacked by a political opponent over same-sex marriage, she flip-flopped on the issue, throwing her own sister--a married lesbian--under the bus and coming out forcefully against it.
When, in 2019, Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar was critical of the pro-Israeli lobby's corrupt influence in U.S. politics, Cheney said
Omar "embodies a vile, hate-filed, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel bigotry"
and called for the Democratic leadership to remove Omar from her
committee assignments.
Later that same year, Cheney voted against every stage of Trump's first impeachment over his efforts to use U.S. aid to strongarm the Ukraine into announcing a phony "investigation" of Joe Biden, voting, in the end, against all of the articles. Three years later, even after Trump had actively tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, Cheney stood by these actions.
In 2020, Cheney pushed the loony conspiracy that some of America's prominent environmentalist groups, including the Sierra Club, were being directed by the Russian and Chinese governments and demanded the Justice Dept. investigate.
While Cheney presents herself--and is now represented by the Clintonite right--as battling "the unraveling of our democracy," she has opposed--and voted against--the Democratic efforts to protect voting rights and defended Repub efforts to crush them.
From a policy perspective, the right had no legitimate complaints about Liz Cheney. Even as she's now presented as some anti-Trump heretic, she voted with Trump 95.8% of the time in the 115th Congress and 92.8% of the time in the 116th.
Cheney is a vile ghoul, and the efforts by the Clintonite right to venerate--and sell--her as some sort of great American heroine, defender of democracy and now martyr speak only to that faction's moral and intellectual bankruptcy.
Cheney's
political career is like a roadmap of Republicans' descent into
protofascism, a protofascism that, as it has consumed American
conservatism, has now boomeranged back to destroy her. In red Wyoming, Cheney won the last 2 Republican primaries for her House seat by over 45 points. But Trumpian protofascism rules the Repub party now, and while supporting Trump on almost everything, Cheney fell afoul of the Trump cult of personality when she decided that Trump's efforts to overthrow the 2020 election went too far. And now, she's history. That's the real story of Liz Cheney.
--j.
