ROGER SIMON: Liz Cheney and Jan. 6 Committee Demonstrate How Hate Makes You Stupid.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo., for now) is an object lesson. Cheney comes from a rich conservative tradition. Her mother Lynne wrote an estimable biography of James Madison. Early in her career, Liz herself consistently voted for and advocated for conservative causes.
Then, along came Mr. Hate.
The instigator: Donald Trump said mean things about her father, blaming him for the Iraq War. I will admit that Trump’s statements were a tad excessive since Dick Cheney, although clearly a key player, was far from alone in supporting that ill-conceived war. An extraordinary percentage did, including most of Washington, the pundit class (yours truly included), and, on occasion, Trump himself.
We were hoping the war would turn Iraq into Denmark. We couldn’t have been more wrong. Trump used that as a lynchpin in his 2016 campaign, attacking Dick Cheney, among others, but Liz reacted to Trump with a level of hate out of all proportion to the situation. A political campaign was underway, the likes of which she had participated in since childhood, and like it or not, insults were part of Trump’s political style. The businessman had insulted all sorts of people, many of whom (like Sens. Rubio and Cruz) now play ball with him on a regular basis.
Not Liz. She made an alliance with people whose views she considered anathema for all of her previous life just to get Trump. It was hate taken to the nth power.
As it turns out, those people she made an alliance with—the Jan. 6 Committee of Democratic Reps. Bennie Thompson, Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin, Zoe Lofgren, and so forth—themselves also permeated with the most obvious hate— have failed miserably at their endeavor and now have abruptly postponed their third Show Trial telecast. The previous telecasts were a ratings disaster and, in some cases, they got caught lying. (“Adam Schiff lie?” Mon Dieu!)
Further, if you believe that eventually, the truth comes out, and I do (mostly), sooner or later the supposed “insurrection” of Jan. 6 will be seen by a majority of our citizens as an FBI put-up job. Many do already.
Liz Cheney, whether she knows it or not, is headed for oblivion after the Wyoming Republican primary. She has no real political friends—does she think the likes of Raskin will support her after this is over? He’s politically closer to Pol Pot. And as of this moment, it looks as if Trump will still be the GOP presidential nominee in 2024 with a good chance of victory. Everything Liz did was for naught.
Speaking of January 6th: Democrats Demand We Care More About Jan. 6 Than They Do. “What Democrats are engaged in today is far more cynical. Opposition to the reckless myth-making that convinced thousands of Trump-backing Americans to ransack the Capitol is, we’re regularly told, something that should transcend partisan politics. The Democratic Party’s electoral tacticians are conceding that the unprecedented attack on the seat of government is just another political football. Most troubling, there’s no guarantee that the paranoid MAGA-backed candidates that the Democratic Party is promoting will lose their respective races. In a political environment that produces wave elections, surprises happen.”