Liz Cheney doesn’t mince words about Donald Trump. She calls the former president a “liar,” a “con man” and a potential “tyrant” who, if elected again, would “torch the Constitution” and its guarantees of free speech and rule of law.
Cheney landed these rhetorical roundhouse punches in a talk last week at the Connecticut Forum in Hartford. The words were all the more powerful from a deposed chair of the House Republican Conference. Listening to the repeated roars of approval from the nearly 3,000 people in the audience, I couldn’t help thinking that Cheney might be an underappreciated X-factor in the 2024 race.
“I will do everything I can to make sure is never anywhere near the Oval Office again,” vowed Cheney. Defeating Trump means reelecting President Biden and rejecting third-party candidates, she said forthrightly. Though she disagrees with Biden on many policy issues, she said his victory in November is necessary to save the country from potential dictatorship.
If Trump wins, Cheney explained, “we’ll be living in a nation that’s unrecognizable, and the danger is so grave that, for the first time in my life, I will be working with every fiber of my body against the Republican nominee for president.” I sometimes find warnings about Trump’s dictatorial ambitions overblown. But, in Cheney’s deeply personal voice, they ring true.
What difference will Cheney’s passionate opposition make? It’s hard to say, given the way Trump has turned traditional political alignments upside down. But maybe she’s a voice for the many Republicans (not to mention independents) who are resisting the Trump cult. She’s an antiabortion, pro-gun, anti-tax conservative. But she thinks those policy differences are less important in November than defending the Constitution — which means stopping Trump.
Cheney said she hasn’t decided yet whether it makes sense to formally endorse Biden. But she has pledged to work until Election Day to “educate” Americans about how dangerous Trump is. At a time when some Democrats are trying to push Biden to the left, Cheney is a reminder that this election, like most, will be won in the middle, where polls show Trump is vulnerable.
Cheney heaped scorn on Republicans who are so frightened of Trump and his base of fervent supporters that they become his “collaborators,” “enablers” and “accomplices.” Among congressional Republicans, “the number of people who believe his lies is very small,” she insisted. “They are enabling this danger, and they know it’s a danger.”
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