MAGA IS NOT CONSERVATIVE, LIZ IS

 Staunchly democratic Republican Liz Cheney finally said it out loud. If Donald Trump is the 2024 GOP nominee for president, she will abandon the party.

This news has been a long time coming. Unlike some long-time iconic conservatives such as syndicated columnist George Will, who not only abandoned the party when Trump became the candidate in 2016, but also called on his conservative readers to vote for Hillary Clinton because Trump was a danger to democracy, Cheney stuck it out for Trump’s entire term. In fact, she voted for Trump’s policies more than ninety percent of the time. But when Trump began undermining constitutional order, Cheney, then the third highest-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, who had already been finding Trump’s loose and reluctant adherence to the Constitution and to presidential traditions disturbing, voted, along with nine other House Republicans, to impeach the then-president for inciting a bloody insurrection against the United States Congress.

The tenacious Liz Cheney, authentic conservative

Since then, Cheney has become the leading conservative voice against Donald Trump’s authoritarian designs, pointing out, principally, that Trump’s refusal, for the first time in US history, to accept the will of the people and submit to the peaceful transfer of power after unquestionably losing an election is intolerable, illegal and unacceptable. She believes, with every conservative bone in her body, that her party must either ensure that Trump never again holds office, or it will become the vehicle for American democracy’s suicidal demise.

As such, Liz Cheney, more than any other personality in the conservative world, has become the poster-girl for democracy, and the clear voice of reason in an America gone insane. Her role as vice-chair of the January Sixth Investigative Committee, has graphically demonstrated her level of commitment to trying to save the United States from the now ever more obvious advance of authoritarianism, since the current GOP leadership, in a cold-sweat panic born of the virulence of Trump’s slavish MAGA entourage, has chosen to embrace the Trump cult of personality—akin only to the rise of far-right populist dictatorships witnessed historically in pre-1990s Latin America, or to today’s populist far-left authoritarian regimes in such places as Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua—rather than losing their seats in Congress.

Cheney, for her part, has risked everything, placing Nation before party, the common good before personal political ambition and democracy before obedience to the GOP hierarchy, of which she is no longer a part. This last is thanks to her demotion by top House Republican and Trump sycophant Kevin McCarthy, who has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he will forsake all that is sacred in American democracy and in the “Party of Lincoln” in pursuit of his all-consuming ambition to be the next Speaker of the House.

Of the ten Republicans who dared confront the autocratic nature of the former president and vote with Democrats for his impeachment, the Trump political machine has left only two standing: namely, Washington State’s Fourth District Representative Dan Newhouse, and California’s Twenty-Second District Representative David Valadao.

Valadao was unique in that he was the only one of the ten that Trump and his mob didn’t target. This, despite the fact that he stated his unequivocal view in voting for impeachment that Trump was “without question, a driving force in the catastrophic events” at the Capitol. Perhaps it was a California thing. Despite being The Land of Reagan, California is considered by Trumpster loyalists to be a place of evil bent on imposing its mighty will and sinful liberal ideals on God-fearin’ folk from coast to coast. So maybe they felt there was no point spending good campaign money to primary Valadao in a largely heathen Democrat land where one Republican was as likely (or unlikely) to carry through as another. Who knows?

Newhouse, for his part, managed to survive being primaried by Trump loyalists, largely due to the “top-two style” open primary system by which candidates are picked in Washington State. According to this system, all candidates are listed on the same ballot. The top two vote-getters, regardless of their partisan affiliations, advance to the general election. As a result, in that state the Trump camp’s practice of primarying an incumbent who doesn’t toe the boss’s line is way less effective than elsewhere, because by this method you could even conceivably have two candidates from the same party running against each other in a general election and no candidate at all from the other party. It’s all about who the two top vote-getters are in the primary process, regardless of party affiliation.

Ohio Representative Gonzalez

The first of the GOP’s anti-Trump ten to be undermined was Anthony Gonzalez, who represents my home state of Ohio and my home voting district in Cuyahoga County. Although a young man, Gonzalez is an old-style Republican who actually believes in serving the public, in the tradition of political compromise, and in the nation instead of himself and has proven to be well-viewed across party lines. He was the sort of candidate who appealed to independents and even to some conservative Democrats because of his commonsense, non-reactionary approach to issues. He has, for instance, been a staunch critic of the appointment of millionaire businessman Louis DeJoy to the job of Postmaster General as part of the Trump camp’s attempt to derail mail-in voting in the 2020 General Election. 

After voting for Trump’s impeachment following the January Sixth Capitol Insurrection, Gonzalez was censured by his party for having "betrayed his constituents (and having) relied on emotions rather than the will of his constituents and any credible facts." Trump supported his own former White House aide Max Miller to run in a primary against Gonzalez in 2022, but the Ohio congressman—and much admired former college and pro football player—preempted that decision by announcing that he would not run again. Gonzalez’s unfortunate decision wasn’t based, however, on the primary challenge, but on multiple credible threats against the physical safety of both himself and his family that he has been receiving from anonymous MAGA fanatics who, Gonzalez clearly believes, will stop at nothing to impose Trump on American society, whether he wins in fair elections or not.

A month after Gonzalez announced that he wouldn’t run again, the much more high-profile Congressman Adam Kinzinger did the same, and for the same reasons. The Illinois Sixteenth District representative became the target of a deluge of death threats from MAGA activists and was subject to hostility from his GOP colleagues in Congress. But the former Iraq War Air Force combat pilot hasn’t allowed that decision—or the death threats—to sway him from his criticism of Trump as a would-be tyrant and a danger to democracy. Like Cheney, he has been active and front-and-center on the January Sixth Investigative Committee, as well as becoming a familiar face on television news shows whenever the subject of Trump’s un-democratic actions has been the subject.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger - not going quietly

One of Cheney’s veteran congressional colleagues who, like her, voted to impeach following January Sixth is Michigan Sixth District Representative Fred Upton. Faced with a Trump-backed primary challenge in the midst of constant death threats, Upton decided to end his thirty-year career in Congress and retire.

Fifty-nine-year-old New York Twenty-Fourth District Representative John Katko made a similar decision after the impeachment vote. He had served four terms in the House following a long career as an attorney.

The other four, including Cheney, who broke ranks and voted to impeach, deciding that Trump’s role in the January Sixth Insurrection was inexcusable and impossible to ignore for the sake of American democracy and constitutionality, were all primaried by the Trump camp and have since lost their seats in Congress as of next year. These include Washington State Third District Representative Jaime Lynn Herrera Beutler, Michigan Third District Representative Peter Meijer—who was only narrowly ousted by Trump-endorsed challenger John Gibbs—South Carolina Seventh District Representative Tim Rice, and, finally, Cheney herself who represented Wyoming At Large.

After a career as a State Department official and Republican presidential campaign strategist, Cheney won her congressional bid in 2016 and has been elected to three consecutive terms since. In her blood red state of Wyoming, her very conservative views and her father’s iconic Republican persona made her a veritable shoo-in for Far West voters. But her vote to impeach Trump and, worse still, her major role in the January Sixth investigation were viewed by the vast majority of far-right Wyoming voters as a betrayal of their trust in her conservatism and loyalty to “their president”.

Former VP Dick Cheney - Liz is fearless

In the lead-up to the Wyoming primary, former vice-president and conservative icon Dick Cheney filmed a TV spot in which, wearing his western Stetson, he looked directly into the camera and said, “In our nation’s two hundred-forty-six-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. Liz is fearless,” he went on. “She never backs down from the fight. There is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office, and she will succeed.”

Despite those moving words from her veteran Republican father, Cheney’s Trump-endorsed challenger, Harriet Hageman, trounced her, walking off with sixty-six percent of the votes. Wyoming was clearly the wrong place for Cheney’s democratic fervor, patriotism and loyalty to the Constitution. Her message, though absolutely right for America, was utterly wrong for winning an election in the most MAGA state in the Union.

All of this is particularly disturbing to me because of my background as an opposition newsman during dictatorial rule in Argentina. Listening to the statements of Republicans who have decided not to run following threats to them and their families strikes home in a very real way with me. As do stories from news professionals in the US who have also enumerated the vicious threats made against them for reporting honestly about the dangers facing US democracy.

These mob tactics being employed by the MAGA crowd particularly bring to mind a time shortly after my boss and mentor, Robert Cox, walked out on a twenty-year career at the Buenos Aires paper where we worked. Until then, 1979, he had stoically borne the heavy burden of his editorial decision to oppose dictatorial tyranny, but when death threats were directed at his wife and five children, the die was cast and he decided to submit to self-exile in the United States—that was decades before the Trump regime would seek to make dictatorships popular and to express actual admiration for them.

Cox, the editor who took on tyranny 

Very soon after his departure from the paper and the country, a colleague who was marrying into one of the wealthy families most connected to the crony system supported by the dictatorship was invited to a cocktail party as her fiancé’s date. While bumping shoulders with some of the strongest supporters of the authoritarian regime, she realized the woman talking to her mother-in-law to be was the wife of the top general in charge of Intelligence and, as such, the man directly responsible for the reign of terror that the dictatorship employed to maintain its power. Drawing near, she overheard the woman say, “See how we finally ran Cox out?” and watched her mother-in-law smile with genuine glee and congratulate the other woman.

You can be sure there is some version of this going on in the Trump-usurped GOP as well, as MAGA leaders gleefully watch the remaining true Republicans in the party give up and walk out on what they see as a lost cause, or at least as an environment too toxic for them to remain in. Indeed, in her comments this past week at The Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Cheney not only said that she would abandon her party if Trump was the candidate, but also opined that the fact that Trump could incite an insurrection and refuse to permit a peaceful transfer of power after losing an election and still have the GOP leadership’s support for the possibility of his running again in 2024 indicated “just how sick” the party is.

Cheney said she would do “whatever it takes” to try and ensure that Trump is not the GOP nominee in the next presidential election. She repeated her pledge to do “everything in her power” to stop Trump’s presidential bid when festival moderator Evan Smith asked if she herself was considering running for president in 2024.

This, to my mind, brings up an interesting point. It is clear that the nefarious influence of MAGA Republicans in the GOP has made it next to impossible to survive politically in that party for true believers in and defenders of democracy like Cheney, Kinzinger, and the other eight in the House who voted to impeach Trump, as well as for people like Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in the Senate, who are managing to hang on to their seats but amid Trump-camp primary challenges and attempts among their peers in Congress to ostracize them.

So how can these true conservatives buck the autocratic MAGA trend and return their party to the values of such icons as Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush, when the MAGA bandwagon is blaring the message that “this isn’t your grandpa’s GOP” and indicating by it that not supporting the authoritarian personality cult surrounding Donald Trump is tantamount to being a traitor to the party and to the country—a message that the new MAGA-Republicanism has in common with every dictatorship that has ever existed worldwide? As I see it, the answer is, they can’t. At least not in this lifetime. The GOP has been hijacked by a neo-fascist crowd that is bent on winning by hook or by crook, that has zero interest in democracy or a two-party system, and that is touting the notion that no idea that comes from anyplace but its own hierarchy is viable or acceptable.

But there is clear evidence that the handful of true supporters of the tenets of American democracy, justice and political tradition that remain active in the party have a following. And Liz Cheney’s courage and true leadership have done much since 2020 to advance that support. I personally know Republicans who are never-Trumpers and were sorrowfully yet patriotically willing to forsake their life-long affiliations to vote against Trump, even if only for a tiny third party candidate with absolutely no chance of winning, while others held their noses and voted for the Democratic candidate simply to make sure that Trump wouldn’t occupy the White House for another four years. These are people who are now discouraged and confused since their conservative democratic ideals are served neither by the current MAGA-Republican leadership nor by the Democrats.

There is also evidence to suggest that Liz Cheney and never-Trump Republican politicians have further garnered potential support among conservative independents and even among some conservative Democrats, as well as among non-MAGA Libertarians. These are all people who are both fed up with the drama of MAGA-Republicanism, with the toxic autocratic image of Donald Trump, and with what they see as ever more liberal trends in the Democratic party.

These people are all hungry for change but see no vehicle for it, when potentially powerful leaders like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and Mitt Romney have been definitively sidelined in an off-the-rails GOP. And although they have been systematically whittled down to a handful by the Trump machine in Congress, the roster of valuable current, former and would-be conservative influencers who see Trump as an existential threat to democracy and, indeed, to the Republican Party as such, is actually impressively long and star-studded. You can get an idea of just how impressive from this list:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_opposed_the_Donald_Trump_2020_presidential_campaign

So, what’s missing here? A new vehicle. A new party. A democratic conservative party for true conservatives instead of a party dominated by MAGA autocrats and coup-mongers. Many people are afraid of any modification in America’s traditional—for all intents and purposes but not always in absolute fact—two-party system. But seeing what has happened in the past six years, I have to ask myself if, perhaps, the US two-party system hasn’t effectively run its course, coming dangerously close to a shooting war between two political organizations that are striving more for superiority over each other than for a working democracy, a constructive debate of ideas and policies, the final compromises and balance between which are actually beneficial to the citizens who vote for them.

A strong, authentic and democratic conservative party could go a long way toward bringing party politics back toward serving the people instead of continuing to be a destructively self-serving force by, for and of itself and in detriment to the nation it was meant to serve. Could a new conservative party win the 2024 election? Perhaps—Independent Bernie Sanders’ near-victory in the Democratic Primary in 2016 provides an encouraging example—but probably not. It could, however, make enormous inroads toward isolating and disempowering authoritarian influence in the American right wing. And it could hold out a promise of conservative authenticity that would only strengthen its influence in the future. If the purpose of Liz Cheney and her fellow small-d democratic Republican colleagues and constituents is really to do “everything in their power” to halt the advance of Trump and MAGA-Republicanism, a conservative third party could well head them off at the pass if Trump is a candidate in 2024. And it could continue to be a bright new democratic force to be reckoned with in the future.

The even bigger problem with cults of personality than their own undemocratic origins and selfish goals is that, like all of us, personalities die. They are not larger than life. They are mortal. And personality-isms, therefore, always devolve into some entirely other “ism” once their self-centered leaders succumb to mortality—usually something far worse, even, than their originally undemocratic selves.

The solution to Trump and MAGA’s takeover of the GOP must come from within democratic Republican ranks. A patriotically-founded conservative party could gain force on the strength of its incipient resistance to the advance of authoritarianism and on the strength of its power to split the Republican vote between true conservatives and the MAGA autocracy in the coming election cycles, thus also serving to purge and cleanse the right of its current authoritarian orientation. In short, it could properly and honorably represent genuine conservatism in the United States, while literally saving the life of American democracy.