Cheney is not attacking only the GOP's reigning god, Donald "Chosen One" Trump. She also is standing up against a party establishment, the entrenched powerful, which, as Democrats who once opposed Nancy Pelosi's leadership in the House learned, is rarely successful.
Still, Cheney's challenge is mostly sound and fury, with little chance of sucess. Matthew Dowd, Independent, former Republican strategist, and founder of "Country Over Party," appeared on MSNBC's "The Reid Out" on Wednesday. He has this one nailed, and not only because he realizes that the Wyoming congresswoman and her allies
have to ask themselves the question, am I facilitating and enabling a party that`s going to push this by staying in it? And that`s my issue with Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and Mitt Romney and others, because what happens if the House is taken over by the Republican in 2022, or the Senate is taken over by the Republican in 2022? The reason why it will be taken over is because Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney stayed in the Republican Party. So they will facilitate this happening.
After host Joy-Ann Reid referred to the "first big lie as having been birtherism," Dowd remarked
Well, to me, it actually -- I trace it back further than the birtherism. I think that if we really look at this and trace it back to where this sort of started, where this virus began and where it really started taking off, it was in the mid `90s. And in the mid `90s with Newt Gingrich started to make cultural argument, and because the Republicans were then beginning to face the prospect that the diversity of America was blossoming and that people of color, women were starting to push themselves into power and at the table. They didn`t like that.
could not agree more with my friend @matthewjdowd https://t.co/aHXAzuENSQ
— Jennifer 'pro-voting' Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) May 13, 2021
Conservative Republicans are not offended because some people are "black and brown." They're not offended even because of the subculture characterizing many members of the black and Latino communities. They're angry because of "the prospect that the diversity of America was blossoming" and ethnic groups conspicuously favoring Democrats "were starting to push themselves into power and at the table." For the most part, they don't dislike them. They simply don't want them to vote.
That's the major Republican mission now. The GOP "autopsy" following the party's loss in 2012 recognized that the nation's demographic profile was changing dramatically, and strongly implied that the Party would have to branch out from their core of old white males. Then failed businessman and successful actor Donald Trump came around to complain "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists some I assume are good people," he won, and their descent down the rathole of voter suppression accelerated.
Now the Republican Party is engaged in a massive, nationwide effort to block Americans from voting. As of March 11, Republican state legislators across 43 states had introduced more than 250+ bills to curb voting. Yet, a mere nine days before she'd be thrown out as chairperson of the House Republican conference, Cheney denounced HR 1, the For the People Act, as "unconstitutional federal takeover," claiming the Democratic effort to protect voting rights
steals power from the people, violates Americans’ First Amendment Rights, and is designed to protect Democrat politicians. The legislation would force hard-earned taxpayer money to fund political campaigns and enable the federal government to control all aspects of our elections.
It’s clear that we need common sense election reform, but this unconstitutional federal takeover would only create more uncertainty for the system.
Liz Cheney has decided that a guy who incites a riot to storm the Capitol and seek the execution of the Vice-President and the Speaker of the House should not lead the GOP or the nation. That places her in a minority in her Party. "Her stand likely won't matter much," Esquire's Jack Holmes writes, "and it certainly does not redeem her or her family name. But her defenstration is, at the very least, a telling mile-marker on this path into the darkness."
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