As of this coming January, Congresswoman Liz Cheney is out of government. And it is quite likely she will never be elected to any government position again at the federal or state level.
She had such promise. She had risen to the highest levels within the GOP (#3 in the House leadership). At the relatively young age of 56, she might well have been looking at becoming Speaker of the House in a future Republican Congress. Congresswoman Cheney could also have been a viable candidate for President.
But all of that has just gone out the window in what seems like an instant. Why?
Because Liz Cheney became infatuated with Donald Trump. Not the “in love with” kind of infatuation, but the “obsessed with” kind. A switch flipped that suppressed her ability to objectively reason, govern her actions with logic, and smartly use her political savvy. All of her attention and energy became blindly directed at destroying Donald Trump. Cheney’s fate was cemented when she maneuvered herself into a leadership position on the Democrat run January 6th Committee, believing this to be the optimal place from which to further that goal.
In doing so, she alienated herself from her Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives who rightly objected to the hyper-partisan formation of the committee and to its clearly one-sided look at evidence and witnesses related to the protests at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. If that wasn’t betrayal enough, Cheney also went against the wishes of the vast majority of her constituents in her home state who she was supposed to be representing.
In an attempt to justify her actions, Cheney claimed to be following her morals and the mandate of a higher authority (a la James Comey) in saving all the rest of us from the abject evil and tyranny of Donald Trump. She admits that the need to pursue this role is so urgent, it transcends her own political future and career.
Is this a psychosis unique to Liz Cheney and several others who have exhibited similar life altering changes in their behavior because of Trump? The same thing happened with Senator John McCain at the end of his time in the US Senate. He was so obsessed with Trump, he flew to Washington, D.C. in the middle of his convalescence from brain surgery to betray his own party in an important Senate vote, just to get in a jab in at then-President Trump.
We think it must be psychosis. Cheney has to know that the best position from which to continue an effective campaign to prevent Donald Trump from regaining the Presidency would be as a sitting member of the House or Senate. Yet she knowingly chose to give that up in what can only be described as an act of political suicide. Even Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, AOC and the rest of the Squad know that they can only be effective in their respective causes if they keep their posts as part of the government.
Cheney’s fall from the top has been astonishing in the speed and scope with which it’s occurred. She won her most recent Congressional election by getting more than 70% of the vote over her Democrat opponent. This past Tuesday, she lost her primary race when her opponent received nearly 70% of the vote. And that was against someone from her own party! This is by far the largest negative numerical turnaround for any politician we’ve seen in our lifetimes.
Liz Cheney is not stupid, politically inept, or a poor communicator. She had every advantage in her favor, not least of which was the support and name recognition from her famous father. Is it really possible that one human being (Donald Trump in this case) has the ability to turn an otherwise very smart and competent person inside out so quickly and completely?
Apparently so. It exposes what is obviously a glaring weakness in Liz Cheney – the inability to remain objective, in control, and be a rational decision maker when personal animosity towards an opponent starts to take over. In a way, we should all be thankful that this weakness was uncovered now, before Cheney had risen further in the ranks of our government where such a flaw could have been disastrous for the country.
Unfortunately, Liz Cheney is not an isolated case of the Trump psychosis. It appears that the entire Justice Department, along with the FBI, has fallen prey to the same malady. The Attorney General’s office, under Merrick Garland, and the FBI, led by Christopher Wray, are now regularly operating outside traditional and legal boundaries in their obsession to somehow “get” Donald Trump. In the process, they have lost a major chunk of their credibility, demonstrating that they too have been overcome with hate for one person and are no longer capable of measured, thoughtful, and unbiased action. Instead, they are diving into an abyss of deceit, fabricated tales of Russian collusion, and now an aggressive and dramatic raid on the home of the former President. And this is in addition to unnecessarily dramatic and harshly executed actions against several of Trump’s associates.1 There is no way this ends well for the DOJ and FBI.
If Liz Cheney or any of her ilk were to truly take a sober and objective look at the events of the last six years, what she would see is the US Constitution prevailing at nearly every juncture. When anyone, Trump included, has tried to circumvent the Constitution, the courts have for the most part corrected that action and restored Constitutional order. Trump himself has never come remotely close to being the villain that has been built up in the mind of Liz Cheney.
What remains crystal clear and obvious is that Donald Trump, with all the good, bad, and ugly that is attached to him, is still the preferred choice of at least half the voting public. And judging from all the recent primary election wins of those he’s thrown his support behind, he is currently the odds-on favorite to win the Presidency in 2024. Liz Cheney’s personal crusade to shut him out by grossly abusing the trust she’d built with the people of Wyoming as well as with her Republican colleagues in Congress, is repugnant.
In her refusal to reflect the will of the people from the state she represents, and by abusing her elected position to attempt to destroy a political enemy, Liz Cheney is the one who is defying the Constitution. We can only wish that in her forthcoming time out of the Washington, D.C. political bubble, she is able to recover some of the senses that made her the promising conservative politician she once was.
1Recently, the FBI made a dramatic and unnecessary show of the arrest of Dr. Peter Navarro, a former Trump advisor. They waited until Navarro was in a very public place (an airport) and put him in handcuffs and leg irons. They then paraded him past onlookers before placing him in a car. Not long after that, the FBI approached Republican Congressman Scott Perry while he was traveling with his family and confiscated his cell phone. These very public acts were designed purely to embarrass and humiliate and were completely unnecessary to the purpose of enforcing the law.
5 Responses
Very nice article. I agree
Great summary of a true head scratching issue. Well, it was for me as well until I hit my head a bit harder and the obvious answer came to me. Family! People will have career goals and political positions that are driving them in life, but make no mistake that those things fall well behind family, especially a parent that championed and financed those career goals. Liz Chaney’s source of hate for Trump became blatantly obvious in a recent seething disgraceful political ad by her father. Daddy is behind this and she had to listen to the powerful man that has guided her life, not just her career. Donald Trump humiliated Jeb Bush and spoiled the Bush dynasty plans in a huge way. And Dick Chaney, in noble fashion has a mission to destroy Trump in revenge. Dick Chaney was the ‘behind the scenes President’ during W’s presidency and widely considered the most powerful Vice President in history. Some say he has a net worth maybe north of $150M, thanks to his deep deep state political ties and a war machine company beneficiary named Halliburton.
Thanks John – we agree. What’s interesting however is that Liz Cheney was first elected to Congress in 2016, at the same time Trump was elected. But she didn’t pull the trigger on her political suicide mission until four years later at the start of her third term. I guess it’s possible she and her dad were simply holding their fire those whole four years and then were driven over the edge by the January 6th protests. Also, I find the argument truly distasteful that Liz Cheney was the only one brave enough and with the guts to do the right thing. Hogwash. She is first and foremost a representative of the people of Wyoming (the only representative as a matter of fact). It would’ve been an entirely different story if the people of Wyoming were clamoring for her to do everything possible to take down Trump. They were not. Quite the opposite in fact. She had one primary Constitutional duty to perform as an elected representative. Not only did she utterly fail, but she also blatantly and knowingly betrayed all of her constituents. That isn’t brave – it’s as disloyal and unpatriotic as it gets.
Excellent job!
I generally had a good impression of Cheney in the past, but that ship has sailed. She has completely lost her mind and has proven to be incredibly dishonest. You hit the nail on the head.
Her personal animosity towards Trump has developed into a psychotic obsession. She doesn’t have an ounce of objectivity and even less credibility when it comes to all things Trump.
Here is just one example. I saw an interview with her and Bret Baier. Bret asked her about Trump offering 20,000 national guard troops to provide security support for the January 6th rally. Cheney then says that isn’t true and that you should look to the testimony of Steven Sund (Capitol Police chief) where he states that no authorization was given. Her statement is incredibly dishonest. Trump did in fact offer up the troops. It is documented and confirmed in a text discussion with Carol Corbin (DOD), and Sean Gallagher (Capitol Police deputy chief) as well as publicly by many including Kash Patel, and Mark Meadows. Sund himself admitted this in an interview with the Washington Post. A “formal” authorization was not given because the Capitol Police declined the offer.
Add that to all the other transgressions by her and the January 6th Committee (altered text messages, edited videos, false statements and rhetoric, cherry picked testimony, and the exclusion of exculpatory evidence). I find this to be a greater threat to Democracy than anything Trump did related to January 6th or challenging the election results.
I am glad she got the spanking she deserved!
Thanks Ray – great comment! If anyone was still harboring thoughts that Cheney might turn it all around and come to her senses, she put that to rest when she sent out mailers to Democrats in Wyoming instructing them how to switch party’s temporarily to vote for her in the primary. After publishing our article, an analysis of the Wyoming primary vote revealed that at least a third of the votes Cheney did receive likely came from Democrats who switched. That means Wyoming Republicans rejected her much more forcefully than even her 37% loss indicated.