The decisive vote to expel Liz Cheney from the number three position in the House leadership for the Republican Party suggests that it's now what we thought it has been: Trump's party. That's the direction in which the Republican Party is going.
It seems like at the last minute, Cheney was rounding up allies. But weirdly, they weren't Republican allies in the House. Rather, they were a group of very strange characters. Nancy Pelosi comes to Cheney's defense and Eric Swalwell. Really? And Bernie Sanders and The Washington Post.
Can you really be a leader of one party when you're being cheered by the stalwarts of the opposition? Can you really be a Union General or leader when you're being cheered on by the Confederacy? Kind of at the last minute, Liz Cheney got her strangest supporter; one, OJ Simpson.
"Watching cable news, it's all about Liz Cheney. Now, I gotta admit, I was not a fan of Liz Cheney. Don't get me wrong, I'm 50-50 on her politics, but I didn't like her. And then I just realized recently the reason I didn't like her had to do with her father, probably my least favorite politician of my adult life, former Vice President Dick Cheney. Then I saw a show the other day, and I saw a quote by Voltaire, it said that patriotism was the enemy of mankind. I thought about that a little bit. Somehow I started thinking about the Republican Party," OJ stated.
"And it seems that fact-based truth and honesty seems to be the enemy of many of these Republican politicians, and Liz Cheney stands up for the truth. And that's got her a lot of heat. She may lose her position in the party; she may even lose her career as a politician. But that is something to be admired, standing up for the truth. That's something I know her father wouldn't have done. So, right now, I'm kind of a fan of Liz Cheney," he continued.
What the heck? OJ Simpson? Really? With friends like this, who needs enemies? Now, I don't think there's any point going into the OJ Simpson diatribe, "patriotism is bad." Well, first of all, I don't even think he's quoting Voltaire. He's probably referring to Samuel Johnson's statement that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But that doesn't mean what OJ thinks it means. Samuel Johnson didn't mean that patriotism is somehow a negative. Johnson himself was a great British patriot. It was one of his reasons for opposing the American Revolution. But what Johnson meant is that patriotism can be manipulated for nefarious causes. For example, you can use patriotism to justify a kind of unnecessary war in Iraq.
And then what kills me is OJ Simpson's reference to the truth. Really, OJ? Well, why don't you tell us the truth about what happened on Mulholland Drive or what happened right there on Bundy with Nicole Brown Simpson? Give us the truth on that, or are you still roaming the golf courses of America in search of the real killer? I think everyone knows the truth about that one, including the judge, by the way, who you went before when you accused of stealing your own merchandise, and the judge gave you 14 years. You know why? Because he wanted the truth to ultimately catch up with you. You normally wouldn't have gotten that sentence, OJ, but I think it was time for truth to catch up with you.
In any event, back to Liz Cheney. Liz Cheney is trying to make this sound like this is all about January 6. This is all about her impeachment vote for Trump. But let's remember a couple of things.
First of all, there were other Republicans who voted to impeach, both in the House and in the Senate. No one's expelled Romney from his position, no one's kicked him out of his committees. And even the House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump haven't had any reprisals. Now, they might be getting some blowback from their own voters, but that's a whole different thing.
Remember that the House voted to keep Liz Cheney. The vote was pretty decisive – 145 to 61. And remember that this was in the immediate aftermath of the Cheney vote. So if the House Republicans were really angry with her about voting, you'd think that right then and there, they'd be like, "That's it! That's enough!" And you'd get this kind of emotionally driven vote to expel her. No, the House voted, "Let's keep her." So clearly, what's happened here is that a lot of people who voted for Liz Cheney the last time have changed their minds. And the question really is, why?
I think the answer has something to do, weirdly, with Dick Cheney.
It's sometimes said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But I think, in this case, hell hath no fury like a woman whose father is scorned — Trump kind of humiliated Dick Cheney by making him out to be a warmonger. And Liz Cheney, I think, is out to settle the score. And this has given her crusade against Trump a kind of monomaniacal dimension. She's sort of fighting an internal war within her own party against probably the most popular figure in the party. So there's a kind of unhinged craziness to this whole thing. And the other Republicans, even the ones that don't like Trump, are like, "Listen, our real fight is against Biden. Look at the horrific stuff that this man is doing. Look at all the stuff that's happening not just in politics, but in the culture, with the sanction of the Biden administration. That's the real enemy." But Liz Cheney can't see it. She's blind to it.
In fact, there's an article in CNN that says that even after being kicked out, she is going to dedicate her life to making sure Trump never makes it back to the White House. So this suggests, if you will, someone who's lost sight of the political, someone not even really thinking politically, but ultimately, emotionally and in terms of family vendetta.
I think, for this reason, Republicans wisely have changed their mind about Liz Cheney. They've realized that she's more of a liability. And if she dedicates herself to this anti-Trump crusade, it's going to be not enough to push her out of the leadership, which has already happened, but really to push her out of the House. And I bet you that there's a whole movement brewing in Wyoming, which I'm sure Trump will get right behind. Trump issued a statement basically chuckling, dancing over Liz Cheney's grave. Trump can't help himself in these situations; he has to jump in. And I'm sure he's going to be lobbying intensely in Wyoming to have Liz Cheney replaced there, as well.
But it's kind of an object lesson to me. Sad, really more than anything else, about a figure who, I think, had promise and is sincere. Trump says she's a horrible person. I don't think she's a horrible person. I think that she is a person who's enthralled, caught up, in a family vendetta that she now feels that she has to settle. And, unfortunately, in trying to settle the vendetta, she is committing her own career suicide.