She indulges her obsession with destroying the leader of her own party in ways we have rarely witnessed. Little else appears to remain of interest to her. As she methodically stalks her singular prey, she pays little heed to her own increasingly perilous political future. She has, it seems, a single remaining passion in life: to purge the GOP of a man who, she proclaims from the mountaintops, stands as a seductive but fatal toxin to the party.
As Democrats prepare for Monday’s second act of the multi-act play they will string out as long as they can, it is fair to say that the millions who tuned into last Thursday’s prime time show trial known as the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, learned a few things. Foremost among them is what justice looks like in a one-party state like the old Soviet Union or today’s Cuba, where the verdict is predetermined, no dissenting testimony is permitted, and a nation is saturated with a one-sided version of events.
Saint Liz?
But they also grasped the fact that one Liz Cheney (R-WY) is on nothing less than a religious mission – behaving as if, like the heroine Joan of Arc, she was chosen by God himself to save her party and country from the scourge of Donald Trump. Up in the rarefied air atop her high horse, you could cut her sanctimony with a knife, begging the question of who died and left her in charge.
Of course, most conservatives – other than down-and-out neocons in the Lincoln Project and their Cheney-like obsession with Trump – condemn what they consider a traitorous mission to destroy a former president who remains – for better or worse – a monumental figure in the party. And equally unsurprising is that her new friends in left-wing media serve as cheerleaders for her efforts – and have suddenly discovered integrity in a family they have openly reviled for the entirety of the 21st century. Washington’s most renowned leftist newspaper might have actually put it best in a piece entitled “Rep. Liz Cheney tells Americans why Jan. 6 should terrify them,” where they write that the congresswoman – and daughter of the former vice president who was long a lightning rod for blistering hatred by the left – is seen by her fellow Wyoming Republicans as “obstinately and surgically focused on extinguishing Trump from the modern conservative movement that he has largely redefined in recent years.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), himself an outspoken foe of the former president, is quoted as saying, “[January 6] is the only thing she cares about … that doesn’t help anyone.”
But what, pray tell, is Liz Cheney’s end game? Where does she expect to land once the lights go down, the cameras cease to roll, and the few whose minds have been changed by the show trial focus on what actually matters to them right now – soaring inflation and a looming recession, for starters? What is left for her once she is no longer a useful idiot for politicians she has opposed for her entire political career? She will proudly proclaim that she performed the Lord’s work in her single-minded attempt to purge from politics forever a man she depicts as monstrous. But who will listen? Who beyond established Trump-haters will care? Who will pay attention once these hearings come to a merciful conclusion?
Fear and Loathing in Cheyenne
Liz Cheney (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Despite a massive war chest, Liz Cheney appears on the road to inevitable defeat in her bid for a fourth term – recent polling has her some 30 points down to Trump-backed challenger Harriet Hageman in the Republican primary for the lone congressional seat in Wyoming, a state Trump won by 46 points. After she is beaten, does she believe the GOP will eventually see the error of their ways and welcome her back with open arms? That concept may seem laughable, but even more ludicrous is the notion that, because she has been so useful to them in providing cover for their dismal public approval, her new best friends in the Democratic Party will gladly welcome her aboard for the long haul – if she would even consider such a thing. Once she has served her purpose and every ounce of usefulness has been wrung out of her, Democrats will surely discard her like yesterday’s trash. And the concept of an independent candidacy for office with no support from either conservatives or leftists would die quickly on the vine.
Certain to be repelled by both right and left, where has Liz Cheney to turn when she is left only with her own shrunken popularity, far from the madding crowd of Republicans who will forever consider her a pariah? She is only 51 years old, and by most accounts was on track for stardom – she had already risen to the third-highest position in the House in just her second term in office, before turning all her attention to taking down Trump, and in the process kicking away first her leadership position – and now likely her seat. Sure, maybe she will be perfectly satisfied to accept the unique golden parachute offered to defeated politicians, a job on DC’s K Street corridor making at least ten times her meager congressional salary of $174,000 to represent special interests. But for a woman with undeniable political ambition, she appears to have made a deal with the devil akin to Joe Hardy in the classic drama Damn Yankees, or like Esau in biblical times, who sold his inheritance to brother Jacob for a bowl of stew.
Is she out for fame at any cost – many have said any publicity is good publicity – or martyrdom, or is she just suffering another advanced case of seemingly uncontrollable TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome)? Did she have visions of grandeur, believing a party in which the man she condemns towers over all competitors in almost every measure of support in the 2024 presidential race, would turn away from him for her sake?
In the end, Liz Cheney may fancy herself Joan of Arc, but of course she will experience neither the best nor worst outcomes for the fabled heroine. She will be considered a heretic, though will not literally be burned at the stake – unlike her career. And she will certainly never be depicted as a hero, or canonized. Instead, she will be a fish out of water, a ship lost at sea, and once Donald Trump leaves the stage, a rebel without a cause.
