She has used her platform to make a powerful showing that Trump is unfit and that Republicans would be on a suicide mission if they nominated him again.
I’m about ready to pronounce Liz Cheney the victor in the January 6 committee hearings.
No, I’m not saying that she has resurrected her House reelection campaign, or that “virulently anti-Trump” is a viable brand in the GOP. I am also not suggesting the January 6 committee is about to be converted formally into what it has de facto been all along: the third impeachment of Donald Trump, necessitated by the Democrats’ derelictions in the second impeachment — in which, rather than conducting the thorough investigation now underway and then competently pleading articles of impeachment that matched the sundry executive abuses, they rushed to politicize the impeachment in an effort to tar all Trump supporters as white supremacists, and all Republicans and conservatives who didn’t swallow whole their Insurrection!™ storyline as aiders and abettors of domestic terrorism.
Congresswoman Cheney has been very effective in relating the committee’s blistering case against the former president. In the short run, however, recent polls suggest an inverse correlation between the impression she has made on the country at large (favorable) and the impression she has made at home in red Wyoming, where pro-Trumpers dominate GOP politics (not so favorable).
There are two poles in GOP politics right now: (a) the too-gradually eroding pro-Trump faction that punches above its weight in intraparty matters and (b) the preponderant but diffident “wouldn’t it be nice if he just went away and let us fight today’s battles instead of relitigating 2020” crowd. These camps leave no traction for a “virulently anti-Trump” alternative — it motivates the former and, by keeping Trump front and center, irritates the latter.
That being the case, there is no stomach for impeaching Trump yet again. It’s not that he doesn’t deserve it. It’s that everything has its moment, and that moment is past. Today’s prudent Republican position is that Trump is a real problem but one that is fading (though too slowly); in the meantime, GOP objectives must be: Keep the spotlight on the faltering Biden administration and its ruinous woke-progressivism, wallop Democrats in the midterms, and then nominate someone who can win a national presidential election. The assumption is that the cumulative effect of pursuing these aims will marginalize Trump — and hopefully convince him not to run again because he doesn’t want to be seen as a loser, but at a minimum make him beatable if he enters the nomination sweepstakes.
If she’s losing on these fronts, then, how has Cheney won the January 6 committee?
. . .
Trump solves the Democrats’ most pressing problems: Biden is not up to the job, and Vice President Kamala Harris is even more unpopular than Biden. The conventional wisdom is that Democrats are stuck with one of these two, so their best shot at retaining the White House is Trump as the GOP nominee. (For what it’s worth, I don’t buy the conventional wisdom; I believe Democrats know they should have nominated Senator Amy Klobuchar in 2020, and they’ll figure out a way to do it for 2024. But that’s for another day.)
Cheney wants to keep Trump at center stage, too, but on a rationale that is night-and-day different.
Big picture, there has been no change, no revelation that has altered our understanding of what happened in this country in the two months from Election Night 2020 through January 6, 2021 — from the time the president of the United States made his first bracing allegation that the election had been stolen from him, through the “stop the steal” machinations, leading finally to the Capitol riot. Nevertheless, while we all know the basic story, granular details that boggle the mind and boil the blood have not gotten due attention — particularly from Americans who follow politics only sporadically.
Cheney appears to me to have been banking on this belief: If she could command the attention of the country for a few days in June, and present what happened as it has never been aired before, in a series of tight, well-scripted sessions, she could hammer home Donald Trump’s unfitness for office. And she could do it out of the mouths of prominent Republicans who served in Trump’s administration and championed Trump policies. That is, instead of partisan Democrat sources, Cheney would use testimony from sources who might be appealing to both pro-Trumpers and Republicans who have no use for Trump personally.
It is already manifest to those willing to open their eyes that Trump cannot win a national election.
. . .
Liz Cheney has used her platform to make a powerful showing that Trump is unfit and that Republicans would be on a suicide mission if they nominated him again. Democrats wanted to make Trump relevant in the hope that he gets the Republican nomination in 2024. Cheney wanted to make Trump relevant to illustrate that he can’t be nominated because it would mean certain defeat. She’s winning.
Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
