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A day before the country woke up from the holidays, one of the most powerful families in Republican politics twice berated President Trump.
Dick Cheney, the former vice president, and Liz Cheney, the third Republican in the House of Representatives, used their significant political capital and decades of experience in Washington to attack the president’s false claims about the theft of votes and his undemocratic efforts to overthrow the election, won by President-elect Joe Biden.
It was an important moment because of Liz Cheney’s ascending political trajectory, and placed her at the top of the only path for the Republican Party that refused to give in to Trump’s attempted coup.
Cheney, a 54-year-old congresswoman from Wyoming, released a 21-page memo that refuted attempts by some Congressional Republicans to challenge the election results, which they plan to do on Wednesday. The memo included a comprehensive compendium of all the ways state and federal courts have dismissed and dismissed the cheating allegations.
“By opposing voters lists, members inevitably assert that Congress has the power to overturn elections and overturn state and federal courts. Such objections set an extremely dangerous precedent, threatening to steal states’ explicit constitutional responsibility to choose the president and instead hand it over to Congress. This is directly at odds with the plain text of the Constitution and our core beliefs as Republicans, ”Cheney wrote in the memo, which was released on Sunday.
As to R-Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s proposal to form a commission to conduct “a 10-day emergency audit of election results,” Cheney responded with barely concealed contempt.
“Did those proposing a new commission realize that they were essentially proposing to delay the inauguration?” Did they want to set a new future precedent where the inauguration is delayed and we have an “interim president”? For how long? Who decides when this process is over? Will it require another act of Congress? Could the interim president veto such future congressional action? If Congress has the power to create such a commission now, are elections, recounts and court challenges to state law just “doing business” until Congress begins to investigate? and decide who should be president? Cheney wrote.
The memo made it clear how the U.S. Constitution does not give Congress any role in determining the presidency unless no one has a majority of the electoral college’s votes. Biden defeated Trump in the Nov. 3 election, winning 306 Electoral College votes against Trump’s 232.
“To substitute our opinions for the votes of the people in the states … would be to instigate a tyranny of Congress and to steal power from the states and the people of those states,” Cheney wrote in a Facebook post Monday.
On the same day Cheney released his memo, the 10 living former defense secretaries wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post warning that any attempt to use the US military to contest the election would drag the country into “territory.” dangerous, illegal and unconstitutional. . He also declared that all members of the army who participated in such undemocratic action “would be responsible, including potentially liable to criminal sanctions, for the serious consequences of their actions on our republic.”
The editorial was organized and directed by his 79-year-old father, who was Secretary of Defense to President George HW Bush from 1989 to 1993.
The Cheneys aren’t the only prominent Republicans to reject the descent into delusion into which Trump has driven millions of Republicans. In the Senate, Republicans Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Mitt Romney of Utah forcefully called out Trump’s lies. Meanwhile, some of the more conservative Republican members of the House, such as Rep. Chip Roy and Rep. Ken Buck, have rejected the idea of challenging the Electoral College vote this week.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has urged Senate Republicans not to vote against the election results. And former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Also issued a scathing criticism of Cruz and others like Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Who are planning to run for office this week. “It’s hard to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act,” Ryan said.
Former Sen. John Danforth, a Republican who represented Missouri for nearly 20 years and endorsed Hawley in 2018, called him name. “Crediting Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen is an extremely destructive attack on our constitutional government. It is the opposite of the conservative; it’s radical, ”Danforth said.
But there are few Republicans in American politics who have developed a more formidable reputation for political battle than the Cheneys, especially since Dick Cheney’s tenure as vice president from 2001 to 2009. After the terrorist attacks of 11 September, Dick Cheney became even more difficult. line defense hawk than it already was, and has pushed the boundaries of law and ethics by advocating interrogation practices that many consider torture. Nicknamed “Darth Vader” by his friends and enemies, his views on national security were so intransigent that over time he even alienated President George W. Bush to some extent.
Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congressman who worked in the George W. Bush administration, said the Cheney family had their stomachs for the kind of backlash provoked by resistance to Trump.
“When you’ve been through these battles before and everyone has attacked you, you’re not so intimidated by it,” said Comstock, an ally of Liz Cheney. “After they tear you apart and you survive, it’s’ Hey, I’m here to do the job. I will not be bullied or bullied. ”
Comstock noted that many members of Congress from predominantly conservative districts “are not used” to criticism from their own side.
As for Hawley, Cruz and others betting on contesting the election results, Comstock said, “It’s stupid and dumber, and it’s lazy.”
“The Cheneys must have done a real hard job in politics, and they don’t disrespect people when they have to say tough things to them. They’ve already done it and they’ve taken the slings and the arrows out of it and they’re ready to do it, ”she said.
Liz Cheney held senior positions in the State Department during George W. Bush’s presidency, but her entry into political office got off to a shameful start. In 2013, she embarked on the main challenge of incumbent Republican Senator Mike Enzi, who was considering retiring but postponed that for six years in part due to Cheney not waiting. let him make a decision. Cheney eventually withdrew from the race.
But since his election to the House in 2016, Cheney has quickly risen through the ranks of the Republican leadership despite his less than stellar relationship with the White House. Although she voted with Trump’s wishes most of the time, she also rejected him and sometimes called him publicly.
When she turned down the option of taking the Enzi seat last fall, it caught the attention of Minority Parliamentary Leader Kevin McCarthy, as well as that of Minority Parliamentary Whip, Representative Steve Scalise. McCarthy and Scalise would both love to be Speaker of the House if Republicans regain a House majority, in 2022 or 2024, and Cheney is now making it clear that she will likely run for that position as well.
Steve Schmidt, a former Republican agent who co-founded the anti-Trump Lincoln project, said that after this week’s electoral college votes, McCarthy “will be the leader of the House autocrats and [Cheney] will be the leader of the House Conservatives.
At the same time, there are dissenting voices on the right who have watched the Cheneys over the years and who see more political calculation in Liz Cheney’s latest moves than courage.
“I don’t understand why they didn’t do it awhile ago, and I think it’s opportunistic for her to get up after [Trump’s] was fully established as a threat to America, ”said one Republican agent who has watched the Cheneys for decades, but did not want to be identified. “Staying up now when it absolutely doesn’t work, there is no political cost.”
A glance at the comments section under Cheney’s Facebook post, however, suggests that she will have to prepare for a lot of criticism at least in the next few days. And Trump, who remains popular among the GOP base, has repeatedly promised that he will seek revenge on Republican lawmakers who refute his attempts to stay in power.
“I’ll never forget!” he tweeted on Christmas Eve.
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