Liz Cheney is a profile in courage for standing up to the extremes of the GOP
In 1956, then-Senator John F. Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for his book, Profiles in Courage. The best seller profiled eight senators who acted with bravery and integrity in defying the opinions of their party and constituents to do the right thing in spite of personal consequences.
Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House and the highest-ranking woman in GOP leadership, exemplifies a modern-day profile in courage.
With campaign endorsements and high ratings from conservative groups, no one has ever accused Cheney of being liberal, let alone moderate, and she surely wasn’t anti-Trump. Cheney voted with Trump 93% of the time according to FiveThirtyEight.
So it is startling to find Cheney on the ropes over a single nonlegislative vote she cast to impeach Trump.
Cheney’s courageous vote was met with a fiery response from her colleagues and constituents. One of her fired-up colleagues traveled to Wyoming to attend a rally urging her constituents to vote her out of office.
Many of her colleagues demanded she be punished and stripped from her leadership post. Historically, each party has policed its own conference members. Following a contentious meeting, the House Republican conference rejected her removal by a 2:1 secret ballot vote.
Back home in Wyoming, where Cheney was recently reelected with nearly 70% of the vote, the Wyoming Republican party voted to censure her this past weekend and asked her to resign.
Cheney, who rose to the moment, was unapologetic, “my vote to impeach was compelled by the oath I swore to the Constitution” and added, “Wyoming citizens know that this oath does not bend or yield to politics or partisanship.”
While Cheney was being chastised by Republicans for her vote of conscience, Republicans failed to even attempt to reprimand Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who lacked one.
Senator Mitch McConnell has called Greene a cancer on the Republican Party in talking about her “looney lies and conspiracy theories.” Greene has long espoused violent and fringe conspiracies, QAnon lies, that have all been discredited.
Here’s a sampling of her dangerous rhetoric: Greene questioned whether a plane flew into the Pentagon on 9/11; she liked social media posts about executing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and FBI agents; she has repeatedly claimed that the Las Vegas, Sandy Hook and Parkland mass shootings were either false flags or staged; and she floated the possibility that a wealthy Jewish family started a California wildfire with lasers from space killing 84 people. Greene even called George Soros — a Democratic donor, philanthropist and Holocaust survivor — a Nazi who “turned in his own people over to the Nazi’s.” Greene thinks Muslims don’t belong in government and black people “are held slaves to the Democratic Party,” and should feel
“proud” to see Confederate monuments.
In the same conference meeting, Greene pleaded felony stupidity for her remarks and reportedly received a standing ovation from half of her colleagues after they all accepted her fake apology. Greene later explained, “I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true.”
So why did the Republicans fail to reprimand Greene? Two years ago, Republican Iowa Rep. Steve King was stripped of his committee assignments by Republicans after he questioned when “white supremacist” and “white nationalism” became offensive.
The answer is simple. Republicans were afraid of alienating voters who are attracted to her inflammatory brand of politics and conspiracy theories. They decided to stand down in the hopes it would go away, rather than stand up to the existential threat that fringe elements present to the party.
If not now, when will GOP elected officials have the courage to address the cancer growing in the Republican Party?
A new poll from YouGov found approximately 30% of self-identified Republicans have a favorable view of QAnon. In December 2020, an NPR/Ipsos poll found that 23% of Republicans believe that a “group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media,” a key principle of QAnon’s baseless conspiracy theory.
Ultimately, Democrats, with the support of 11 House Republicans, took the unprecedented action of voting to strip Greene of her committee assignments.
Cheney and the few but notable other Republicans who have voted their consciences against their party are today’s profiles in courage and their actions will stand the test of time.