One day before the country revived itself from a holiday vacation, one of the most powerful families in Republican politics issued a double reprimand from President Trump.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney and third-party Republican Liz Cheney have used their significant political capital and decades of experience in Washington to attack the president’s false claims on ballot papers and his undemocratic attempt to overthrow them. to cast the ballot, which President-elect Joe Biden won.
It was an important moment because of Liz Cheney’s upward political trajectory, and put her ahead in the one lane of the Republican Party that refused to concede to Trump’s attempted coup.
Cheney, a 54-year-old Wyoming congressman, has released a 21-page memo outlining the efforts of some Republicans in Congress to challenge the election result, which they want to do Wednesday. The memorandum contains a thorough collection of all the ways in which state and federal courts have rejected and rejected claims of fraud.
‘By objecting to elections, Members inevitably claim that Congress has the power to block elections and to dominate state and federal courts. Such objections set an extraordinarily dangerous precedent, threatening to steal states’ explicit constitutional responsibility to elect the president and instead give it to Congress. This is in direct conflict with the clear text of the Constitution and our core beliefs as Republicans, ”Cheney wrote in the memo published Sunday.
As for Sen. Ted Cruz’s proposal, R-Texas, to form a commission to conduct a ’10-day election audit ‘, Cheney responds with barely concealed ridicule.
‘Did those who proposed a new commission realize that they were essentially proposing to postpone the inauguration? Do they intend to set a new future precedent where the inauguration is delayed and we have an ‘acting president’? For how long? Who decides when the process is over? Will it require another Congress law? Can the acting president veto any future Congress action? If Congress now has the authority to set up such a commission, are state elections, versions and constitutional legal challenges just ‘make-work’ until Congress investigates and decides who should be president? Cheney wrote.
The memorandum clearly set out how the U.S. Constitution gives Congress no role in the decision on the presidency unless no one has a majority of the votes of the electoral college. Biden defeated Trump in the November 3 election by winning 306 votes from the Electoral College against Trump’s 232.
“Replacing our view for the voices of the people in the states … would create a tyranny of Congress and steal the power of the states and the people in those states,” Cheney said in a Facebook post Monday. post written.
On the same day that Cheney released her memo, all ten former Secretary of Defense wrote a headline in the Washington Post warning that any attempt to use the U.S. military to contest the election, the country to ‘dangerous, will take illegal and unconstitutional territory. . It also said that members of the military who took part in such undemocratic actions would be responsible for the serious consequences of their actions on our republic, including criminal fines.
The op-ed was organized and led to the forefront by her 79-year-old father, who from 1989 to 1993 was Secretary of Defense under President George HW Bush.
The Cheneys are not the only prominent Republicans who have rejected the descent to delusion that has led Trump to millions of Republicans. In the Senate, Republicans Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Mitt Romney of Utah violently shouted Trump’s lies. Meanwhile, some of the most conservative Republican members of the House, such as Rep. Chip Roy and Rep. Ken Buck rejects the idea of challenging the Electoral College this week.
Senate leader Mitch McConnell urged Senate Republicans not to vote against the election result. And former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Has also expressed serious criticism of Cruz and others like Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Who plans to contest this week’s election. “It’s hard to think of a more anti-democratic and conservative act,” Ryan said.
Former Senator John Danforth, a Republican who represented Missouri for nearly 20 years and who approved Hawley in 2018, exclaims him by name. “Giving credibility to Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen is a very devastating attack on our constitutional government. This is the opposite of conservative; it’s radical, ”Danforth said.
But there are few Republicans in American political life who have developed more fearsome reputations than political struggle than the Cheneys, especially since Dick Cheney’s tenure as vice president from 2001 to 2009. After the September 11 attacks, Dick Cheney has an even harder became- line defense hawk as he already was and shifted the boundaries of law and ethics in pleading for interrogation practices considered by many to be torture. His views on national security, nicknamed “Darth Vader” by friends and foes, were so uncompromising that in time he even alienated President George W. Bush to some degree.
Barbara Comstock, a former Republican member of Congress who worked in the George W. Bush administration, said the Cheney family has the stomach for the kind of setback that Trump has raised.
“When you go through all these fights and everyone has to go to you, you are not so intimidated,” said Comstock, an ally of Liz Cheney. ‘Once they tore through you and you survived, it’s’ Hey, I’m here to do the work. I’m not going to be bullied or intimidated. ”
Comstock noted that many members of Congress from overwhelmingly conservative districts are “not used to” criticism from their own side.
As for the gambit of Hawley, Cruz and others to challenge the election results, Comstock said: “it’s dumb and dumb, and it’s lazy.”
‘The Cheneys had to do hard work in politics, and they do not respect people when they have to say hard things. “They have done it before and they have taken the slings and arrows of it and are willing to do it,” she said.
Liz Cheney held senior positions in the State Department during the George W. Bush presidency, but her entry into political office got off to a tricky start. In 2013, she rushed a primary challenge from a sitting Republican senator, Mike Enzi, who considered retiring but partially postponed it for six years because Cheney did not wait for him to make a decision. Cheney eventually withdrew from the race.
But since her House election in 2016, Cheney has risen rapidly from the ranks of the Republican leadership, despite her less-than-stellar relationship with the White House. Although she voted with Trump’s wishes most of the time, she also bowed to him and sometimes shouted at her in public.
When she turned down the opportunity to take Enzi’s seat last fall, it got the House’s minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, as well as that of House Minority Whip Representative Steve Scalise. Both McCarthy and Scalise would like to be House Speakers if Republicans reclaim the House majority in 2022 or 2024, and Cheney is now clearly signaling that she is likely to run for office as well.
Steve Schmidt, a former Republican agent who founded the anti-Trump Lincoln project, said that McCarthy will be the leader of House Autocrats after the votes this week on the Electoral College ‘and [Cheney] will be the leader of home conservatives. ”
At the same time, there are a few divergent voices on the right that have watched the Cheneys over the years and see more political calculations in Liz Cheney’s latest movements than courage.
‘I do not understand why they did not do it a while ago, and I think it is opportunistic that she should get up afterwards [Trump’s] fully established as a threat to America, ‘said a Republican operator who has been observing the Cheneys for decades but does not want to be identified. “There is now no political cost to the fact that it now has to comply if it is not going to work at all.”
However, a look at the comments below Cheney’s Facebook post suggests that she will have to steel herself for a lot of criticism, at least in the coming days. And Trump, who is still popular among the GOP rankings, has repeatedly promised to take revenge on Republican lawmakers who refute his efforts to stay in power.
“I will never forget!” he tweeted on Christmas Eve.
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