If you were to refer to “Dick and Liz,” most people of a certain age would likely assume you were talking about the glamorous couple of Hollywood’s golden age, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. But in the spirit of the quip “My parents went to the Caribbean [or wherever], and all I got was this lousy T-shirt,” most Republicans would probably think you were referring to Dick and Liz Cheney. Now, however, to the consternation of most Republicans, both have cut off their nose to spite their face politically.
On Sept. 4, sore loser Liz Cheney endorsed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president. Speaking at Duke University in swing state North Carolina, the former Wyoming Republican congresswoman said that “as a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this, and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.
” Daddy Dick Cheney, a former GOP vice president, followed suit, likewise opposing former President Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House. “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” he averred in a written statement, adding, “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
” But that is just political sour grapes at their sourest. After then-Rep. Liz Cheney chose to cast her lot with House Democrats on their anti-Trump kangaroo court Jan.
6 committee, Wyoming Republicans in August 2022 banished her to the obscurity she so richly deserved in what was the second-worst-ever primary drubbing of an incumbent member of Congress. How will the endorsement of someone who got just 28.9% of the vote in her own election help anyone else? In so doing, they drove a stake through the heart of the Cheney dynasty: Whatever dreams they may have had of a Senate seat — or perhaps a higher office — for Dizzy Miss Lizzie were irretrievably lost.
Forget Mudville. There is no joy today in tony McLean, Virginia — at least not in the Cheneys’ households. The best Ms.
Cheney can hope for now is to be the nominal Republican that Ms. Harris promises to include in her Cabinet if elected. Driven by their unhinged animus against Mr.
Trump, both Cheneys are willing to sell the Republican Party — but more importantly, the country — down the river. They’re OK with condemning the American people to four more years of rampant inflation, trillion-dollar deficits, and millions more immigrants crossing our southern border illegally. They’re apparently also OK with the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket’s radical stances on abortion and transgenderism.
In embracing Ms. Harris and, by extension, the policies of the Biden presidency, the Cheneys are OK with making America poorer, more indebted and more crime-ridden. The Cheneys said they were endorsing Ms.
Harris because Mr. Trump is supposedly an existential threat to the country — albeit “without evidence,” to borrow a pet phrase of the anti-Trump mainstream media. Mr.
Trump’s four years in office — with no wars, low inflation and lower levels of illegal immigration — should have disabused them of that nonsensical premise. Not surprisingly, however, Ms. Harris is “honored to have [the Cheneys’] endorsement.
” They were courageous to “put the country above party,” she and other Democrats intoned. (They were not so sanguine about former Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
and ex-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard doing likewise, albeit in favor of Mr. Trump.
) Ms. Harris claimed she was thrilled to have Dick Cheney’s support — even though while he was vice president from 2001 to 2009, Democrats universally reviled him as Darth Vader, Satan, a war criminal and their reflexive go-to, Hitler. A neocon warmonger who championed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Dick Cheney was arguably the worst Republican vice president since Spiro Agnew.
Tapped in 2000 by then-candidate George W. Bush to help find him a running mate, Mr. Cheney looked in the mirror and found one there, even though he added nothing of value to the ticket.
(It’s not as if Wyoming’s three electoral votes were ever in play for Democrats.) When he left office in 2009, his popularity rating was 13%. Many of us have long maintained that Mr.
Bush picked Mr. Cheney as his running mate primarily because he was browbeaten into it by Democrats’ claims — eagerly echoed by the mainstream media — that he lacked the gravitas to be president and needed someone who could supposedly provide that to the ticket. Politics — or, in this case, personal grudges and grievances — really do make strange bedfellows.
In the end, however, it’s doubtful that the Cheneys’ endorsement of Ms. Harris will move the polling needle. As for Liz? Baptist minister William Murray — son of the late atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who sued to get prayers removed from public schools in the 1960s — once told me that his mother took perverse delight in being “the most hated woman in America” at the time.
Today, among Republicans at least, Liz Cheney has earned that dubious distinction and Dick Cheney really is Satan. Somewhere, O’Hair is laughing with delight. Copyright © 2024 The Washington Times, LLC.
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