Liz Cheney has a foremother
Meet the devil in the disguise of a woman
Today (Wednesday), Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., most likely will be removed from her role as GOP conference chair for her outspoken opposition to the other guy, and the other guy’s Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent.
It was not stolen. The other guy lost.
Cheney most likely will be replaced by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-New York, a former moderate who couldn’t be detached from the other guy’s derriere without precision surgery. Her replacing Cheney is, says this fine Bulwark article, a tocsin, a word I had to look up. Goodbye rule-of-law Republican party.
On Tuesday, Rep. Cheney spoke on the House floor — while most of her GOP colleagues vacated the premises, off in search of their spines — and gave a soaring speech that included this:
Every one of us who has sworn the oath must act to prevent the unraveling of our democracy. This is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans. Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar," Cheney said. "I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former President's crusade to undermine our democracy.
Conservative’s conservative Cheney is, sadly, in the minority among Republicans in her ability to speak aloud her opposition to the other guy’s unfathomable hold on the Party of Lincoln. You can count the other outspoken opponents on one hand — Cheney, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, and Sen. Mitt Romney. Am I missing anyone? Probably, but probably not too many.
Cheney now stands with Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine), who was an early opponent of Sen. Joe McCarthy and his unhinged campaign against purported Communists in the U.S. government and entertainment industry. Smith was socially liberal, but hawkish. During Pres. John F. Kennedy’s administration, Nikita Krushchev called her “the devil in disguise of a woman.”
Smith, the lone female Senator during the McCarthy era, was an early supporter of the Wisconsin senator, until she asked to see his evidence of rampant Communism in the upper echelons of the U.S. Disheartened, the political independent — the daughter of a town barber and a shoe factory worker — planned to give a speech on the Senate floor on June 1,1950. On her way to the chamber, she ran into McCarthy, who, sensing he’d lost a supporter, asked if she would be giving a speech.
Yes, she said. “And you will not like it.”
McCarthy’s rejoinder was a threat to take support from Smith in her bid to be the vice presidential candidate in 1952.
She gave the speech, a Declaration of Conscience, anyway. She never mentioned McCarthy by name, but it was obvious to the senators — most of whom sat silent out of fear of McCarthy’s ire — precisely who was her target.
Her speech is worth rereading, but here are some highlights:
The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body in the world. But recently that deliberative character has too often been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity.
and
I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some real soul searching and to weigh our consciences as to the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America and the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges.
I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution. I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.
She decried the Democratic administration (Harry S. Truman’s) as “loose-spending” and erratic, but said:
Yet to displace it with a Republican regime embracing a philosophy that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to the nation. The nation sorely needs a Republican victory. But I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny-Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.
Her speech was co-signed by six senators (none of them from Connecticut, by the way). For her troubles, she lost a committee membership (that seat was given to up-and-comer Richard Nixon, of California), but newspapers and her constituents were already tiring of McCarthy’s antics, and they supported Smith.
Smith, who’d also served in the U.S. House of Representatives, served four terms in the Senate. She even ran for president in 1964 (Goldwater was her party’s candidate). She is remembered for her integrity and courage. And McCarthy? Well…
There’s next to nothing I agree with Congresswoman Cheney about, and even less so her father, but as Lin-Manuel said from the upstage center balcony, “Jefferson has beliefs - Burr has none.”