January 6th, 2021
I want everyone to remember January 6th before voting. Before thinking it won’t hurt anything to sit this one out. Maybe you’re not thrilled about the candidates. Or you don’t agree on everything. Or if you are a Republican who planned to vote for Democrats this year but now with the final Trump push and scary talk about Dems on conservative radio and Fox, and by other MAGA Republicans, you feel yourself confused and wavering. Or you know someone who might be. You may find this video helpful.
Liz Cheney, former Republican congresswoman, daughter of Dick Cheney, Vice-President under George W. Bush, gave remarks and answered questions this week at the Institute of Politics/Harvard Kennedy School. As you may or may not know she lost her seat in congress because she stood up to Donald Trump, leading the charge for his impeachment.
Oh boy did she have a lot to say. I thought I knew all the anecdotal information about Republican elected officials and how they behaved just before, during and after January 6th. But her remarks were informative, shocking and illuminating.
One of the questions was about what do Republicans tell themselves when they are betraying their sworn duty to uphold the constitution? Liz Cheney was able to tell us. I hope you give it a listen. The transcript is also available here.
Here are some highlights of her remarks. I’ve bolded portions.
About objecting to certifying the 2020 election, members were assured: “This is the last thing you’ll have to do.”
“Not only did many of them [House Republicans] object (to certifying the election in 2020) they told their constituents, ‘If you come to Washington on Jan 6th you can overturn these results.'”
“And we had another moment when the House Republicans were all meeting the day before when one of our members who had been very vocal about telling her constituents, “Come to Washington and you can change the results” stood up in this meeting of all of the Republicans and she said ‘look I’m really worried about my security because we’ve all told people they can come here to overturn the results and that isn’t true, and when they find out it’s not true they’re going to be really angry at us.”
We [Republicans] started on the day after the attack with a unified party. There were very few Republicans in the house who were defending the president. maybe one or two.. you had Kevin McCarthy actually saying on our leadership call that he was going to tell the president to resign. There was absolute understanding of what had happened.
What changed?
I think that what changed was..there was a sense that we don’t have to stick our necks out here because Trump’s done anyway. That was McConnell’s position.
On impeachment:
One crucial moment that led us to where we are today was McConnell not voting to convict. If he had voted to convict I think he would have had enough Republicans that would follow him and he [Trump] would have been convicted. That was a real tragedy. And that was a real political calculation… We can get by this without having to take a tough vote.”
So easy. Not complicated at all. That’s what they told themselves then. I wonder what these cowardly simpletons are telling themselves now. Probably this, something Liz Cheney overheard another Republican say in the coat room at the capitol.
“The things we do for the orange Jesus” – unnamed R
