What’s Liz Cheney’s Problem?
A more self-aware politician would resist the urge to continually antagonize her party’s base.
Liz Cheney doesn’t seem to know when to shut up. And what appears to be a chronic case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, it’s going to cost her a leadership position in the Republican Party.
Cheney has become the darling of the mainstream media and a bevy of fair-weather Democrat friends for her belief that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election fair and square. Of course, those “friends” of hers would love nothing more than to see the GOP torn asunder by a civil war from now until Tuesday, November 8, 2022 — the date of our next midterm election.
Most recently, Cheney was suckered into a war of words with former President Donald Trump, who’d said in an email to supporters, “The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!”
Cheney, for whatever reason, couldn’t help but take the bait. “The 2020 presidential election was not stolen,” she tweeted. “Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE.”
Translation: Those tens of millions of Americans who aren’t satisfied that the issue of fraud in the 2020 election was fully and properly investigated and adjudicated are “spreading THE BIG LIE.”
The 2020 election is indeed history, but only The New York Times and other idiotic leftists believe Sleepy Joe Biden got all 81 million of his votes on the up-and-up. (Remember: That total is millions more population-adjusted votes than Barack Obama got in 2008.)
Republicans need to move on, it’s true, but they do themselves a deep and potentially mortal disservice by failing to heed the lessons of 2020 and by failing to push for voting reform to keep it from happening again. As our Mark Alexander noted on January 6, “While President Trump has been focused on electronic hardware and software manipulation, which could account for election fraud, I believe those concerns, while legitimate, are a diversion from the real mass-voting fraud — millions of bulk-mail votes that have, ostensibly, been authenticated.”
In short, Trump, Cheney, and every other Republican should be focused on fixing our broken election system, getting rid of the Democrats’ fraud-rich scheme of bulk-mail balloting, and denouncing their undemocratic and unconstitutional HR 1 bill at every turn.
Of course, the 2020 vote dispute hasn’t been Cheney’s only misstep. Recall, too, that she was one of just 10 Republicans to side with Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, and Adam Schiff and vote to impeach President Trump for having “incited” the January 6 Capitol riot. You remember — for the high crime of having told his supporters, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
That impeachment vote was, in our eyes, unpardonable. It was a gift of aid and comfort to a deceitful, mean-spirited, and viciously hyper-partisan enemy.
And so, in terms of addressing the Cheney issue, it’s probably a good thing that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy got caught speaking his mind yesterday. As National Review’s Caroline Downey writes, “McCarthy was caught on a hot mic Tuesday saying he has ‘lost confidence’ in Representative Liz Cheney. ‘I think she’s got real problems,’ McCarthy told host Steve Doocy off-air just before a Fox and Friends interview. … ‘I’ve had it with her. You know, I’ve lost confidence. … Well, someone just has to bring a motion, but I assume that will probably take place,’ the California Republican commented.”
That motion, we can safely assume, would be one to remove Cheney from her leadership position as the party’s House conference chair.
“This is about whether the Republican Party is going to perpetuate lies about the 2020 election and attempt to whitewash what happened on January 6,” Cheney spokesman Jeremy Adler said in a statement. “Liz will not do that. That is the issue.”
We’d beg to differ. The issue is whether Liz Cheney can lead while continually staking out deeply unpopular positions with her party’s lifeblood, its base.
Leaders must lead. And to be successful, they must have the pulse of their people. Liz Cheney simply doesn’t seem to understand this. And she does herself no good by continually putting her thumb in the eye of tens of millions of Republican voters.
(Updated.)