Progressive Perspectives on Liz Cheney

On Tuesday, Rep. Liz Cheney’s lost her primary to a challenger backed by former president Donald Trump. It was not an unexpected outcome.

Cheney has been a vocal critic of Trump ever since the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, an insurrection overseen and encouraged by Trump. In July 2021, Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Cheney to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. Two months later, she was made vice chair of the committee. Her involvement in the work of this committee and her consistent denouncement of Trump for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, ensured criticism and censure from her own party, a party still very much under the spell of Trump. Her defeat in Tuesday’s primary was expected, given that Wyoming is one of the most pro-Trump states in the country.

Since her defeat, various memes, like the one at left, have been circulating on social media platforms. A number of my friends, for instance, have posted this particular one on their Facebook timelines. Yet I can’t help but think that such uncritical lionizing of Liz Cheney is problematic, to say the least. I also sense that it’s typical of MSNBC-loving liberals. Few progressives are joining the chorus.

So what are progressives saying about Liz Cheney? The following excerpts from recently published articles provide some answers as they reflect progressive perspectives. And by this I mean informed points of view that recognize the importance of – and thus advocate for – ever-expanding circles of inclusion, compassion, justice, and civil and human rights.

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If not for Donald Trump’s attempt to steal the election, [Liz] Cheney would still be backing him. . . . The reason for her rising star [back in 2016] was straightforward: She was a Bush administration veteran who was willing to go to the mat for Donald Trump. They both had a use for each other. By the start of her second term, she was chair of the House Republican Conference. When Trump ran for re-election she offered her endorsement.

But [yesterday], Cheney’s career in Congress came to an abrupt end, when she lost her Republican primary to conservative challenger Harriet Hageman. The election itself was mostly a formality. After voting to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection and vowing to push back against his “crusade to undermine our democracy,” Cheney was stripped last year of her House leadership position. The Wyoming GOP censured her, and later voted to no longer recognize her as a Republican.

None of this is to erase the work she’s done as a dogged and justifiably incensed leader on the January 6 Committee. She stands almost alone in her caucus, in her decision to not just quietly retire, or gripe anonymously to the press, but to actually fight back and wield the power she has against the threat she’s so clearly recognized. She’ll be fine, of course, both professionally and financially, but if the stand she took cost nothing, well, a lot more people would have taken it. But perhaps her fate might also be a lesson to the aspiring public servants out there – that the movement you cynically stoke might some day come for you, too.

– Tim Murphy
Excerpted from “Liz Cheney Was Defeated By the
Extremist Movement She Helped to Empower”
Mother Jones
August 16, 2022

While her work on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol has been exemplary, Cheney’s record is that of an extreme right-wing advocate for positions that have mirrored those of Trump when it comes to attacking immigrants, refugees, Muslims, and Democrats. Before her split with the 45th president, she voted with him 93 percent of the time. And she has an ugly history of exploiting political divisions by promoting Big Lies, as Cheney did when she refused to reject Trump’s vile “birther” lies about former President Barack Obama, and when she claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris “sounds just like Karl Marx.”

– John Nichols
Excerpted from “Liz Cheney Is No Abraham Lincoln”
The Nation
August 17, 2022

Like her father before her, [Liz] Cheney thrived within and contributed to the very atmosphere that nurtured Trump. When Trump tried to ban Muslims from entering the country, and lied about both the 2016 and 2020 elections, Cheney marched to his beat. If January 6 shocked her conscience, she barely deserves credit for common sense, forget courage.

. . . How did we get to a place where someone like Cheney can receive plaudits from liberals and Never Trumpers alike? To the Never Trumpers, Cheney is an understandably attractive figure; her political martyrdom is proof of the bravery they share. To liberals, her allure is more elusive but seems rooted in nostalgia for a past that never really was. Once upon a time, they tell themselves, the world worked. Progress was slow but assured, and the GOP was a friendly foe with which they could reason. The truth is contained in the career of Liz Cheney. The old world had faults deep in its foundation. Cheney merely pulled the house down with her. What’s left is wreckage and a world to rebuild without her.”

– Sarah Jones
Excerpted from “The Culpable Liz Cheney”
New York Magazine
August 17, 2022

Liz Cheney’s electoral defeat is not the fall of an American hero. She’s not going anywhere, and she’s no hero. The good she is doing on the January 6 Committee is almost certainly being done for less than admirable purposes. To ignore that fact is to overlook another front in the war on democracy.

Cheney is one face of the creeping totalitarianism that has been eroding American democracy for decades (and it wasn’t in great shape to start). Her bitter feud with Donald Trump is best understood as part of an internal battle currently raging within this country’s anti-democratic forces.

. . . Trump’s brand of fascism is hasty, unruly, and impulsive, a cult of personality that is built around an unstable and vain figure. Cheney represents another branch of American totalitarianism, one built on institutions, elites, and stability. Hers is the slow totalitarianism of internal spying, voter suppression, dark money elections, and dynastic politics.

Cheney’s branch of American totalitarianism helped the military-national security establishment grow in power, forging ever-deepening ties with corporations, educational institutions, religious establishments, and political institutions at all levels – a hybrid form of government, lest we forget, that political scientists call “fascism.”

. . . As is so often the case in history, there are no heroes in the Cheney/Trump conflict. One side is steadily eroding freedom at home while promoting wars abroad. The other side offers rage and chaos. That’s not to say there isn’t a fight underway to build genuine democracy in the United States. There is, and its outcome will shape the future. But if that’s your fight, Liz Cheney is not your ally.

– Richard Eskow
Excerpted from “Liz Cheney and Donald Trump:
The Two Faces of American Totalitarianism”
Common Dreams
August 19, 2022

Related Off-site Links:
Rep. Liz Cheney Loses GOP Primary to Trump-backed Challenger – Kevin Breuninger (CNBC News, August 17, 2022).
Liz Cheney’s Loss in Wyoming is Trump’s Biggest Primary Victory As He Tries to Purge the Republican Party of His Critics – Oma Seddiq (Business Insider, August 16, 2022).
John Nichols: “Standing Up to Donald Trump in the Republican Party Leads to Your Defeat” – Democracy Now! (August 17, 2022).
How Team Trump Systematically Snuffed Out Liz Cheney’s Reign in Congress – Alex Isenstadt (Politico, August 16, 2022).
Cheney Ponders 2024 Bid After Losing Wyoming GOP Primary – Steve Peoples and Mead Gruver (AP News, August 17, 2022).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Rep. Liz Cheney: Quote of the Day – June 30, 2022
• Mitchell Zimmerman: Quote of the Day – June 23, 2022
• Rep. Liz Cheney: Quote of the Day – June 9, 2022
• Two Conservative Voices of Integrity
• “How Can One Overreact to a Mortal Threat to American Democracy?”
• A Deeper Perspective on What’s Really Attacking Democracy
• “The Coup Attempt on Jan. 6th Was a Warning for What’s to Come If We Don’t Act”
• “My Biggest Worry Is for My Country”
• Republicans Pose an “Existential Threat” to American Democracy
• The Big Switch
• The Republican Party in a Nutshell
• Republicans Don’t Care About American Democracy
• Heather Cox Richardson on Combating the Republican Party’s “Rigging of the System”
• David Remnick: Quote of the Day – February 13, 2021
• Dan Rather on America’s “Moment of Reckoning”
• Michael Harriot: Quote of the Day – January 6, 2021
• Insurrection at the United States Capitol
• Progressive Perspectives on the Rise of Donald Trump (2016)

Image: Drew Angerer/Getty Images.