Liz Cheney May Be the GOP’s Last Gasp for Relevance

By Colleen O’Connor

Helen Keller could have been describing today’s Republican party, when she remarked (over half a century ago); “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision.”

An apt portrait of today’s GOP that finds itself in disarray, disbelief, and even disgust as a minority party, lacking any vision (except blind loyalty to Trump) while now desperately trying to divorce themselves from his malignant legacy.

The Democrats won the trifecta; White House, the House and Senate.

Nowhere to hide after the Trump-inspired insurrectionist mob stormed the Capital, waving their Trump flags and promising eternal fealty to overthrowing the certified 2020 election results.

Then came the swift move for a second impeachment of the now “most unpopular President in U.S. History).  Speaker Pelosi marshaled the House votes and signed the verdict to impeach Trump “willfully inciting violence against the Government of the United States” –

“Incited by President Trump, a mob unlawfully breached the Capitol, injured law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress and the Vice President, interfered with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the election results, and engaged in violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.”

Enter the rare courage (or gift of sight) of the House Republican conference chair, Congresswoman Liz Cheney.

Imagine the rage when Liz Cheney, (daughter of hyper-right, ultra-hawk, and Bush V.P., Dick Cheney), announced that she would vote to impeach Trump.

In her own words;

“Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack.

“Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.

“I will vote to impeach the President.”

Immediately, Cheney was met with calls for her removal from her leadership position; demands that she resign; and shouts of “betrayal.” One outlying Republican posited that Wyoming should begin “secession.”

Then, nine other House Republicans joined Cheney and voted to impeach the President.  This compared to zero in the first impeachment act; and only Senator Mitt Romney voting to convict in the Senate.

Follow up.  Senate Majority leader, Mitch McConnell, seemed to follow Cheney’s lead. The day before President-elect Biden’s swearing-in, McConnell took to the Senate floor and blamed Trump for the insurrectionist mob attack on the Capitol.

“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said.  An extraordinary clarity of language from McConnell.

“They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like. But we pressed on, we stood together and said an angry mob would not get veto power over the rule of law in our nation.”

Ironically, the biggest Trump crony after Sen. Lindsay Graham, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), was presiding as McConnell spoke. McConnell’s speech, may, in fact, signal the votes exist to convict Trump when the Senate trial begins as early as next week.

As both Cheney and McConnell know, the best way to remove a metastasized malignancy is to excise it and prevent any chance of a recurrence.

Conviction of Trump in the Senate will prevent him mounting a presidential run in 2024 and from ever holding any public office. McConnell, who experienced a fall from Majority to Minority leader, certainly wishes to alter his trajectory.

Cheney’s vision of the future, however, may be what saves the Republican party.