Liz Cheney's diagnosis of the Republican Party

Liz Cheney couldn’t have been more right about two things. Firstly, the election of “idiots” is destabilizing the country, and secondly, this isn’t a partisan phenomenon.

There was a substantial disconnect between the audience at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan and Ms. Cheney when she enunciated the staggering costs of idiocy. She wasn’t going for a cheap line or laugh. She was delivering a dead-on sober assessment around an obvious fact when the system is blinking red.

There is no question that Ms. Cheney deserves tremendous respect for her lonely display of defiance and political courage against the vast appeasement faction that consumed the Republican Party as it buckled to Trump’s fantasies, and ultimately, sedition. Along with Adam Kinzinger, she stood against a tide of malfeasance, conspiracy, lying, and betrayal unequaled in America since the Confederacy. When Donald Trump unleashed his mob, ended the peaceful transition of power, incited a coup, and tried to seize power illegitimately, Ms. Cheney not only said no, she laid down her career to deliver the message. She would not bend, and in the end, she is the most important player in the most important US House investigation in American history. She relentlessly exposed the Trump conspiracy, and made sure that the American people knew about it.

Yet, her comments are dissatisfying because they frame the Republican Party as an institution that is in angst about a choice that it has already made. In fact, the fealty towards Trump is more intense than ever. The reality is that the party and its elected leaders succumbed to Trump’s demagogic siren a long time ago. The battle lines have been drawn, as they say. From where things stand now, if Trump is an existential threat, then the institution that is his conveyance to power is also a threat. The reality is that Donald Trump is rising in the polls since his indictment under the Espionage Act. 

Let me be clear. Donald Trump is the leader of an autocratic cult of personality that is fascist in character, cruel in disposition and utterly dishonest in its representations. It is a cancer and its name is MAGA.

MAGA controls the Grand Old Party at a local, county, state and national level. It is utterly supreme. What this means is that the Republican Party is the vessel for MAGA extremism and its lawless threats of violence, mayhem, revenge and retribution.

Donald Trump is supported by a vast, well-funded and powerful confederacy of mutual self-interest that cheers corruption in the government as a license to plunder themselves. They love Trump. They love his dishonesty and lack of ethics, and they believe he is coming back to power. Whether he does or not, there is no debate in the Republican Party about this question at this moment. It was decided a long time ago along the road of a thousand small capitulations.

John Kennedy once posed a question that pondered the existence of national political parties. He wondered what their purpose was if not to advance a vision for a great national purpose. What purpose does the MAGA/GOP have? We are forever stuck at overthrowing the government for Trump. There is no path forward with the low and hollow politicians who have taken America to this toxic place. The era of reform this country needs cannot possibly begin until they are all gone.

Good for Liz Cheney for calling it out.

Here are more of my thoughts on Liz Cheney saying that “what we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.” I talk about the courage that Liz Cheney showed by breaking away from Donald Trump, and how the country must make a similar move to protect our democracy: