Robert B. Reich: Liz Cheney and the future of the Republican Par

Source: https://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-reich-08282022-20220822-ebj5g5jygrd2rf7gnj5mksepgq-story.html

 

Liz Cheney recently lost her primary race to Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman, who received 65.8% of the vote to Cheney’s 29.5%.

 

“Two years ago, I won this primary with 73% of the vote,” Cheney said last after the loss. “I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would’ve required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic. That was a path I could not and would not take.”

 

The Trump Republican Party continues its purge of honest Republican lawmakers who refuse to go along with Trump’s Big Lie — the most dangerous lie in American history in terms of its consequences for Americans’ confidence in democracy.

 

After January, Liz Cheney will no longer be in Congress. But her role in American politics is not over. She is now the de facto leader of the Trump opposition — in the Republican Party and also, in a larger sense, in American politics.

 

Democratic leaders and candidates in the upcoming midterms are not focusing especially on Trump. They want to make the midterms (and I expect will want to make the 2024 election) about what Americans need in the future rather than on the threat to democracy posed by Trump. I understand and sympathize with this. But who is going to lead a pro-democracy movement without focusing on Trump?

 

Most other Republican lawmakers are too scared to take on Trump. They have given up the last shards of their integrity in exchange for gaining or holding power. Among the very few who have objected to him publicly, none has established nearly the prominence of Liz Cheney.

 

I expect that Cheney will run for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. If Trump is still alive and coherent, and most Republican voters are still deluded by him, she will lose. I hope she then runs as a third-party candidate for a new Republican Party that represents the best values of the old GOP -- one that I recall from when Dwight Eisenhower was president.

 

My father was a Republican. So was my grandfather. The first administration I joined in Washington was Gerald Ford’s. One of my dearest friends is Alan Simpson, former senator from Wyoming.

 

But since Ronald Reagan became president, I’ve watched the Republican Party turn from a governing institution into a crazed cult. It is not just bent on returning America to what it was before the New Deal. It is now intent on turning America into an authoritarian nation. It represents a clear and present danger to the future of the United States and the world.

 

I have disagreed with Liz Cheney on almost all the substantive issues she has voted on while in Congress. But on the transcendent issue of democracy -- the foundation on which all other issues depend -- I salute her leadership, her dedication, and her commitment. And I grieve for the Republican Party that has lost her and lost what’s left of its moral authority.