“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
Heroes come from the strangest place, and they aren’t always universally worthy.
Sam Ervin was an American hero when he chaired the Senate Watergate Committee in the summer of 1973, but the North Carolina Democrat voted against every civil rights bill presented during his decades in Congress.
Ervin was a racist, although to be fair not a vicious one.
The woman who spoke the words at the beginning of this piece is similarly conflicted. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., has become something of a hero for being one of a very few people in her party willing to call Donald Trump what he is.
A liar and a criminal.
That took courage, especially since it will almost certainly cost Cheney her seat in Congress this fall.
But Cheney essentially started her political career in Wyoming by throwing her sister Mary under the bus.
Mary Cheney is gay, and one of the very few issues on which her father Dick Cheney wasn’t all that conservative was on equal rights for gay men and lesbians. But when Liz first ran for office in 2014 in Wyoming, she came out against same-sex marriage.
To be fair, when Cheney was interviewed on “60 Minutes” last September, she told Lesley Stahl she regretted her earlier position on the issue.
What lesson should be take from this? Maybe just that people have flaws, that its very possible to be heroic when the situation asks it of us even when we are flawed individuals.
Compared with the motley crew of Republicans in Washington these days, Liz Cheney looks like a giant. She is still extremely conservative and a neocon supporter of Bush-Cheney policies such as the war in Iraq. But it has taken enormous courage to stand against Trump and the Big Lie.
I can’t imagine voting for Cheney for anything unless the only choice was a Trumpanzee. That doesn’t stop me from admiring her efforts to make Americans understand the truth about what happened in 2020 and what is continuing to happen in the Republican Party.
Yes, Liz Cheney is a hero.