Liz Cheney's Liberal Critics Are Missing the Point

[kentuck]

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/liz-cheney-purge-republican-trump-lie-democracy-liberal-critics.html?utm_campaign=nym&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1



I certainly wouldn’t vote for Cheney as the guardian of America’s moral authority — or for any other public office, for that matter. I agree that she has spent her career advocating ideas and policies I find misguided, immoral, and sometimes completely deranged. And yet this round of liberal complaints misses the profound significance of her current stand.


But Cheney’s break with her party is not just one issue, to be weighed on the ledger alongside all the others. It’s a question of singular importance.


Cheney’s decision to challenge the party on democracy is remarkable for several reasons. First, she is putting the issue squarely. Rather than softening her line or couching her stance in the logic of messaging (i.e., Trump’s rhetoric will hurt Republicans with swing voters), she is straightforwardly instructing her fellow Republicans that their current path is a menace to the Constitution and the rule of law. Second, she has absolutely nothing to gain and a great deal to lose.

And third, the fact she is such a dogmatic right-winger on economic, social, and foreign policy gives her support for democracy more, not less, weight. The very point of her dissent is that support for democracy ought to be separated from policy outcomes. Republicans should not succumb to the temptation of siding with a would-be authoritarian merely because he promises to advance their policy goals. “He’ll undermine the Constitution, but give us low capital gains taxes and friendly judges” is not a morally defensible trade-off. Democracy is the one question not subject to horse-trading.

[Bettie]

2. First off, Democrats have no input into

whether her own people get rid of her or not.

Second, we can recognize that she's standing up to them while recognizing that she's not our friend.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

11. There you go again Bettie

Being mature

[malaise]

15. THIS

[StarfishSaver]

20. Exactly

I have no intention of joining the Liz Cheney Fan Club.

[Solly Mack]

32. Thank you

[pecosbob]

3. I'm simply here to see this train wreck in slow motion.

It's like watching several of your enemy's destroyers ram their own flagship. I don't think they need any help.

[TheRickles]

4. Good distillation of the issues, kentuck. Thanks.

[NJCher]

5. your last point

is very important.

[colsohlibgal]

6. At Least There Is A Line She Won't Cross

She and most of us here don’t agree about a whole lot. But at least this time she has done the right thing in refusing to buy into the big lie.

[ShazzieB]

7. Amen to all of this!

[gab13by13]

8. Great post Kentuck,

We won't have to worry about politics and issues if we become an autocratic state.

The Liz Cheney discussion is about democracy, period.

[BlueNProud]

9. Baloney. The idea that the GOP can be "saved" by people like Cheney is naive

The GOP is a white supremacist terrorist organization and whatever hastens their descent into crazytown and total collapse should be encouraged. Liz Cheney isn't going to matter one way or another.

[gab13by13]

14. Are you sure about the collapse?

They aren't done gerrymandering yet. If they only gerrymander 6 new districts (they will do many more) they can win back the House.

Now imagine a Republican controlled House with Speaker of the House, Gym Jordan. Do you think he will follow the Constitution?

I foresee a Republican controlled House seating Republican delegates at the Electoral college convention even though Democrats won the states.

The insurrection is on going, saying that the MF45 party is in disarray is wrong. They just gave a Qanon company access to ballots and all of the voter registration information in Arizona and guess what is happening now? Arizona Republicans are purging 140,000 people from the voter rolls. Care to wager how many of those people are Democrats?

It's not about saving the GOP exactly, it's about saving democracy and about preserving the rule of law.

[kentuck]

16. Agree.

As if the Democratic Party would not be affected at all if the Republican Party broke up their white supremacist cult?

[BlueNProud]

33. And Liz Cheney was going to stop them from doing any of those things?

[AZ8theist]

10. If only her party had any policy ideas.....

I ask my Reich wing friends all the time:

Name ONE POLICY, just ONE, that Repukes have enacted in the last 40 years that has benefitted YOU???

I usually get blank stares, or a succession of "uuuuuums......"

If they had any, they wouldn't need the voter suppression, racism, billionaire tax cuts and the Qanonsense stupidity.
And they wouldn't need the fucking Ruskies to put them in power.

[The Magistrate]

12. Hear Hear, Sir

[nuxvomica]

13. It's important to denormalize the Trumpian agenda

That's why I'm grateful for Liz Cheney's stance, and for W publishing a book celebrating immigrants, and any pushback against those complicit with the insurrection. This is no longer a political fight, it's an existential fight for democracy.

[DownriverDem]

17. She's looking at

history.

[Stuart G]

18. K and R

[StarfishSaver]

19. You're putting a lot of effort into defending Cheney on this board

[kentuck]

21. Thank you.

I'm glad I could help.

[StarfishSaver]

23. I'm sure you're not the only one who's glad you're helping

[WhiskeyGrinder]

26. Every day I'm struck by how many threads about Liz Cheney and Trump I see here.

Oh well, better than focusing on actual issues, I guess.

[gab13by13]

28. Issues won't matter in a dictatorship.

[gab13by13]

27. We're defending Cheney's defense of democracy,

we're defending Cheney's defense of the rule of law. Defense of Liz Cheney isn't about her political ideology, it's about saving our fragile democracy.

If we lose our democracy we won't have a Democratic party.

[StarfishSaver]

29. That may be what YOU'RE doing.

Some others are doing far more than that.

[kentuck]

31. Right!

The Democratic Party has very slim majority in the House and Senate. It's not like they are winning landslide elections.

Do some folks realize how much they act like Republicans?

[Random Boomer]

22. Trump has no policy goals

The GOP is siding with Trump because he (at least in their minds) wins elections, which means they keep their job. Any specific policy agenda was jettisoned long ago. Now it's just graft and greed keeping them in the game.

[King_Klonopin]

24. Cheney and Kinzinger are the only GOP reps with balls.

I can't let my ideology stand in the way of bolstering their message.
I can support them on this one issue.
I can tolerate the dissonance of competing thoughts and emotions.

The only way we can be rid of this cancerous political movement called "Trumpism" (vomit)
is if more Republicans denounce it. Any bit of pushback from any republican is a welcomed
opportunity.

Then we can get down to pressing them to decry the root causes which all sprouted from the
Right-wing media propaganda apparatus, taken right out of the fascist owners manual:

The propagation of opinion over facts,
lies over truth, the bigger the lie, the more likely people will believe it.
what-aboutism,
the supposition that "both sides" have a legitimate point, instead of calling out falsehoods.
anti-intellectualism,
the lack of accountability,
polarization and division,
racist, white male privilege and anger
provoked paranoia and conspiracy theories
demonization of anyone who dissents with your viewpoint.

A steady diet of Anger and Fear, 24/7 has brainwashed 30% of the country.

We can't fall victim to a binary political spectrum of thought, or we will become just like them.

[Pepsidog]

25. Well said.

[Texin]

30. Which "liberal critics" are they referring to?

I can generally despise her politics (and those of her execrable father), but admire her for speaking out on the current state of the GQP.