Cheney makes America great again

A lot of my Democratic friends think Liz Cheney is a saint to be embraced by all Democrats and that she should join us. She shouldn’t. She is honest, cogent, even inspiring, but she is not a Democrat or some closet liberal. She is an honest Republican, sees Donald Trump for what he is, and is not afraid to say so. That distinguishes her from virtually every other Republican in Congress, including our Senators, and a frightening number of Republicans across the country.

The Jan. 6 committee took testimony from 1,000 witnesses and accumulated 140,000 documents. Video clips shown at the hearing prove that Donald Trump is a liar, doesn’t understand democracy, and is indifferent to the law. I think he would have declared himself President for Life if he had had a second term and time to fit a crown. Republicans in the House their oath, “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”

Donald Trump is a domestic enemy. Liz Cheney knows it and shines a light for her willfully in-the-dark Republican colleagues, silent when they should be speaking up. Speaking truth, they fear, would make them free of office. It is craven. It puts personal interest over national interest. It embraces fiction and its author over fact.

They might look to history. When Joe McCarthy was censured by the Senate in 1954, the effort began with a Republican Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, who stood up like Chaney, and continued until other Republicans finally joined her. But today, Republicans in the House and Senate have been struck dumb. (I heard McCarthy speak once. He had a drinking problem and stumbled on the way to the podium. It was the highpoint of his visit, at least for me.) Today as many as 40 percent (sometimes a few fewer) of Republicans still believe Trump, a miracle of ignorance.

The hearings have shown Donald Trump intended to shout fraud from the start. He was supportive of mob demands for hanging of his loyal to-a-fault vice president, Mike Pence. He cheered insurrection thugs beating up on police, destruction of sacred places where one officer testified, I was slipping in people’s blood”.”

How can any Republic able to walk and chew gum at the same time not cheer Cheney, defend her from the false charge she is a Democrat, and lift her as a symbol of their party’s better days? The silence of her colleagues is distressing. They know the truth and they have sold their souls if they have one.

What does it all mean to us, in Iowa? Defenders of Trump should stop their nonsense. Sen. Chuck Grassley is not dumb. He cannot claim he’s to busy working on more important issues to watch the hearings. That is a coward’s way out, not a responsible senator’s.

One Trump defender, Congressman Andrew Clyde, described what we all saw as “a normal tourist visit.” And there is Trump himself. It was reported, “On the eve of (a recent) hearing, he posted on his new social media site that Jan. 6, “represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again.”

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.