Liz Cheney: Making America Great Again
The following comments are from Norman Sherman, Norman Sherman is a friend of Deb Mallory (DCQCs Secretary), who now lives in Iowa. His writings are usually spot on and quick reads. Like many political memoirists before him, Minnesota native Norman Sherman has provided a firsthand account of the momentous events that occurred while he was part of Washington’s inner circle. For Sherman, a former aide to Hubert Humphrey, those events occurred 50 years ago, when Humphrey was Lyndon Johnson’s vice president.
A lot of my Democratic friends think Liz Cheney is a saint to be embraced by all Democrats and that she should join us. She shouldn’t. She is honest, cogent, even inspiring, but she is not a Democrat or some closet liberal. She is an honest Republican, sees Donald Trump for what he is, and is not afraid to say so. That distinguishes her from virtually every other Republican in Congress, including our Senators, and a frightening number of Republicans across the country.
The January 6 committee took testimony from 1,000 witnesses and accumulated 140,000 documents. Video clips shown at the hearing prove that Donald Trump is a liar, doesn’t understand democracy, and indifferent to the law. I think he would have certainly declared himself President for Life if he had had a second term and time to fit a crown. Republicans in the House took their oath, “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”
Donald Trump is a domestic enemy. Liz Chaney knows it and shines light for her willfully in-the-dark Republican colleagues, silent when they should be speaking up. Speaking truth, they fear, would make them free of office. It is craven. It puts personal interest over national interest. It embraces fiction and its author over fact.
They might look to history. When Joe McCarthy was censured by the Senate in 1954, the effort began with a Republican senator, Margaret Chase Smith, who stood up like Cheney, and continued until other Republicans finally joined her. But today, Republicans on the committee, and colleagues in the House and Senate have been struck dumb. (I heard McCarthy speak once. He had a drinking problem and stumbled on the way to the podium. It was the highpoint of his visit, at least for me.) Today as many as 40% (sometimes a few fewer) of Republicans still believe Trump., a miracle of ignorance.
The first hearing has shown that Donald Trump intended to shout fraud from the start. He was prepared to urge the hanging of his loyal to-a-fault vice president, Mike Pence. He cheered insurrection thugs beating up on police, destruction of sacred places where one officer testified, ”I was slipping in people’s blood”.
How can any Republican able to walk and chew gum at the same time not cheer Cheney, defend her from the false charge she is a Democrat, and lift her as a symbol of their party’s better days. The silence of her colleagues is distressing. They are not all dumb, blind, and deaf. They know the truth and they have sold their souls if they have one.
What does it all mean to us, in Iowa? Defenders of Trump should stop their nonsense. Charles Grassley is not dumb.
He cannot plead that the hearings are not over and he will wait for all the testimony. That is a coward’s way out, not a responsible Senator’s
One Trump defender, Congressman Andrew Clyde, described what we all saw as “a normal tourist visit.” And there is Trump himself. It was reported, “On the eve of Thursday’s hearing, he posted on his new social media site that that day, June 6, “represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again”.”
