Driving across Wyoming in the summer of 2022, it was clear U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney’s campaign was roadkill.
Billboards and yard signs along the highways screamed, “Ditch Liz” and “F– Liz.” Before a single vote had been cast, her Republican primary opponent, Harriet Hageman, had already won.
It was all because the former darling of the state’s Republican establishment, beloved daughter of Dick Cheney, had done the unthinkable.
She spoke the truth.
Wyoming voters can’t handle the truth.
Her voting record was among the most consistently right-wing in the U.S. Congress. She opposed abortion rights, assault weapons bans, background checks for gun buyers, voting rights, consumer protections against price gouging in fuel sales, anything that would curtail oil drilling and coal mining – never mind their impact on the environment – and marriage equality, going so far as to refuse to attend her sister’s gay wedding in 2012.
She voted for Donald Trump’s positions 92.9% of the time during his four-year term.
Then she voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and she didn’t mince words.
“The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president. The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
In her new book, “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,” Cheney doubles down on her scathing assessment, saying her fellow Republicans suffer from a “plague of cowardice” and calling what’s become of the party of Lincoln an “anti-Constitution party,” whose members are in thrall of “the orange Jesus” and have lost all respect for the rule of law.
Some of her most withering criticism is aimed at Kevin McCarthy whose lies, betrayals and failures of leadership are catalogued in such lavish detail, it makes me wonder if this book played a role in his decision to turn tail and resign from the House this month.
He is revealed as an embarrassment to the country, a dishonest, obsequious toady, willing to humiliate and prostrate himself at the feet of the deranged former president.
And keep in mind, when this sycophant was speaker of the House, he was second in line to the presidency.
But McCarthy is not the only one in the Republican cult of personality to earn her scorching wrath.
Mike Johnson, Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik and Lauren Boebert among many others are depicted as unethical buffoons willing to violate their oath of office and trash the Constitution in service to Trump’s lies.
She relates – to her own surprise – how much she came to respect Nancy Pelosi for her integrity and leadership throughout the investigation by the House Select Committee into the Jan. 6 insurrection. She called her “a leader of historic consequence.”
In her book, Cheney reminds us of the unvarnished reality of Jan. 6, when Trump supporters sprayed police officers with mace, bear spray and all manner of toxic chemicals, then beat them with flag poles and steel rods, and wrestled with them trying to steal their service weapons.
They stormed the U.S. Capitol, terrorized members of Congress and their staffs, and vowed to “Hang Mike Pence.”
When Trump told the rioters they needed to “get rid of” Liz Cheney, her father called to tell her she was in danger and needed to take cover.
Her cause is greater than politics or even her life-long personal ambitions. She burns every bridge that might lead her back into the good graces of the Republican Party as it stands now.
It’s breathtaking.
But profiles in courage come in many forms and she stands as one who stands tall and, damn the torpedoes, refuses to back down.
“History is watching,” she says again and again in the book.
I hope she’s right. After all, if things go very bad in the 2024 elections, “Oath and Honor” could be one of the most prominent banned books of 2025.
Diane Carman contributes Opinion columns to The Colorado Sun, a nonpartisan news organization based in Denver.
