OPINION:
Rep. Liz Cheney has been censured by the Wyoming Republican Party and the Republican National Committee for her conduct in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. That conduct has drawn a boatload of Democratic dollars and a lot of mainstream Republican support. Small wonder, but they’re giving their money and lending their names to a person who deserves the thumbs down.
The House of Representatives impeached then President Donald Trump for allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 riot. It held no hearings, didn’t allow the president to present a defense, and in a constitutionally suspect gambit, voted to impeach a president who it knew would be gone before the Senate could remove him. Did Liz Cheney, the number-three Republican in the House, raise the constitutional issue or object to proceedings that give kangaroo courts a good name? No, she voted to impeach him, and did so loudly, accusing him of incitement in no uncertain terms.
Not content with membership in one railroading body, Ms. Cheney boarded another. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formed a committee to “investigate” the events, and in a step never before taken, blackballed two minority party appointees to the committee. Far from objecting to this stacked deck, Ms. Cheney accepted a Pelosi appointment to the committee.
Ms. Cheney has continued her intemperate attacks on Mr. Trump from her committee perch. Since Jan. 6, 2021, she has seldom championed Republican positions or criticized Biden policies, though she has continued to vote with Republicans.
I’m a strong conservative and have long admired Ms. Cheney. She’s brilliant, thoughtful and articulate, an asset to her party when she was its number three in the House, but she’s lost her way. Her words and actions in the past year have not advanced the agenda or interests of the Republican Party. They’re the primal scream of an anti-Trump zealot. She’s earned her censures; it’s time for her to go.
JIM DUEHOLM
Washington
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