Trump Didn't Bring Down Liz Cheney--Her Conservative White Base Did

[Novara]

Trump Didn’t Bring Down Liz Cheney—Her Conservative White Base Did

Representative Liz Cheney’s defeat on Tuesday in her primary battle against Donald Trump–backed candidate Harriet Hageman proves again that the biggest problem facing this country is white conservative voters. It’s not Trump or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his quest to be Trump-with-reasoning-skills. It’s not Fox News or Alex Jones or the other purveyors of white-wing media. These characters and organizations are merely opportunists: flies that fatten themselves on a deeper rot. Nobody from Trump to Tucker would be able to threaten American democracy without the willingness of white conservative voters to trash everything to keep themselves in power.

Cheney herself was a beneficiary of the white conservative lust for power before she was a victim of it. The congresswoman, who is functionally a Virginian, is the representative from Wyoming because of her family name. Her father, Dick Cheney, was the state’s lone representative in the House for 10 years, but he is better known as George H.W. Bush’s secretary of defense and George W. Bush’s vice president.

Much has been written about the evil career of Dick Cheney, but he is popular with a certain kind of white person for his brutal projection of white American hegemony across the globe. Cheney père is the former CEO of defense contractor Halliburton, was one of the main drivers of the Iraq War, and supports torture. In a decent country, men like this must use their power from the shadows for fear of being rejected by popular majorities. In our country, Cheney won multiple elections to various public offices. He’s not telegenic or charismatic: He’s just cruel, and that cruelty was enough for his people.

Liz Cheney rode the wave of that legacy of cruelty to public office. She went to law school and worked at the State Department. She has focused most of her career on foreign policy, parroting the same Cheney-family tripe about how liberals are “weak” and America needs to be “strong” and somehow that means starting wars and violating international human rights. After some time in the Fox News echo-sphere and a failed run for Senate in 2014, Cheney was elected as Wyoming’s sole representative in 2016, at the same time as Trump won the presidency election. In Congress, she voted with the Trump administration 93 percent of the time, including during his first impeachment, which is odd because, with her foreign policy bona fides, one might have expected Cheney to do precisely the opposite. (Trump, after all, was accused of trying to bribe a foreign government to start an investigation into a political rival.) But no matter. She broke with her party for the second Trump impeachment, when she decided that attacking the Capitol was wrong, and despite her years of loyal service to the Trump machine, she was drummed out of her party.

Anybody who thinks she's a hero for her work on the J6 committee owes it to themselves to read the article. It's a good reminder of who she is and how she got where she is.

[Ray Bruns]

1. Saw an interview by her neighbors last night. Have known the Cheney's for decades.

They said there was no way they were going to vote for her. They were going to vote for trump

[texasfiddler]

2. I wish the Nation and other media would stop

Using the term conservative to describe today’s GOP. They conserve nothing. That includes our planet and our democracy. They are right wing and authoritarian.