WASHINGTON – Rep. Liz Cheney is facing ouster Wednesday from
her leadership post chairing the GOP Conference for her continued pushback
against former president Donald Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter
fraud, which she refers to as "The Big Lie."
She
spoke on the House floor Tuesday evening. The following are the full
remarks of what the Wyoming congresswoman said:
"I know the topic is cancel culture. I have some thoughts
about that but tonight I rise to discuss freedom and our constitutional duty to
protect it. Mr. Speaker, I have been privileged to see firsthand how powerful
and fragile freedom is. Twenty-eight years ago, I stood outside a polling
place, a schoolhouse in western Kenya. Soldiers had chased away people who were
lined up to vote. A few hours later they came streaming back in risking further
attack, undaunted in their determination to exercise their right to vote.
"In
1992, I sat across a table from a young mayor in Russia and I listened to him
talk of his dream from liberating his nation from communism. Years later, for
his dedication to the cause of freedom, Boris Nemtsov was assassinated by
Vladmir Putin's thugs.
"In Warsaw – in 1990 – I listened to a young Polish
woman tell me that her greatest fear was that people would forget. They would
forget what it was like to live under Soviet domination. That they would forget
the price of freedom.
"Three
men, an immigrant who escaped Castro's totalitarian regime; a young man who
grew up behind the Iron Curtain and became his country's minister of defense;
and a dissident who spent years in the Soviet gulag have all told me it was the
miracle of America captured in the words of President Ronald Reagan that
inspired them.
"And I have seen the power of faith and freedom. I listened
to Pope John Paul II speak to thousands in Nairobi in 1985. And 19 years, I
watched that same pope take my father's hands, look in his eyes and say God
bless America.
"God
has blessed America, Mr. Speaker, but our freedom only survives if we protect
it. If we honor our oath taken before God in this chamber to support and defend
the Constitution if we recognize threats to freedom when they arise.
"Today we face a
threat America has never seen before. A former president, who provoked a
violent attack on this capital in an effort to steal the election, has
resumed his aggressive effort to convince Americans that the election was
stolen from him. He risks inciting further violence. Millions of Americans have
been misled by the former president, they have heard only his words, but not
the truth. As he continues to undermine our democratic process, sowing seeds of
doubt about whether democracy really works at all.
"I am a conservative Republican, and the most conservative of conservative principles is reverence for the rule of law. The Electoral College has voted. More than 60 state and federal courts, including multiple judges the former president appointed, have rejected his claims. The Trump Department of Justice investigated the former president's claims of widespread fraud and found no evidence to support them. The election is over. That is the rule of law. That is our constitutional process.
"Those who refuse to accept the rulings of our courts are at war with the Constitution. Our duty is clear. Every one of us who has sworn the oath must act to prevent the unraveling of our democracy. This is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans. Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar. I will not participate in that. I will not sit back and watch in silence, while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president's crusade to undermine our democracy.
"As
the party of Reagan, Republicans have championed democracy, won the Cold War,
and defeated the Soviet communists. Today, America is on the cusp of another
Cold War, this time with Communist China. Attacks against our democratic
process and the rule of law empower our adversaries and feed Communist
propaganda that American democracy is a failure. We must speak the truth, our
election was not stolen, and America has not failed.
"I received a
message last week from a Gold Star father who said standing up for the truth
honors all who gave all. We must all strive to be worthy of the sacrifice of
those who have died for our freedom. They are the patriots Katharine Lee
Bates described in the words of 'America the Beautiful' when she wrote 'Oh beautiful
for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self, their country
loved, and mercy, more than life'.
"Ultimately, Mr.
Speaker. This is at the heart of what our oath requires, that we love our
country more. That we love her so much that we will stand above politics
to defend her. That we will do everything in our power to protect our
Constitution and our freedom that has been paid for by the blood of so
many. We must love America so much that we will never yield in her
defense. That is our duty."
From the NY Times:
ReplyDelete…Let’s acknowledge who created the template for Trump’s Big Lie. It was her father, Dick Cheney, whose Big Lie about the Iraq war led to the worst mistake in the history of American foreign policy. Liz, who was the captain of her high school cheerleading team and titled her college thesis “The Evolution of Presidential War Powers,” cheered on her dad as he spread fear, propaganda and warped intelligence.
From her patronage perch in the State Department during the Bush-Cheney years, she bolstered her father’s trumped-up case for an invasion of Iraq. Even after no W.M.D.s were found, she continued to believe the invasion was the right thing to do.
“She almost thrives in an atmosphere where the overall philosophy is discredited and she is a lonely voice,” a State Department official who worked with Liz told Joe Hagan for a 2010 New York magazine profile of the younger Cheney on her way up.
She was a staunch defender of the torture program. “Well, it wasn’t torture, Norah, so that’s not the right way to lay out the argument,” she instructed Norah O’Donnell in 2009, looking on the bright side of waterboarding.
She backed the futile, 20-year occupation of the feudal Afghanistan. (Even Bob Gates thinks we should have left in 2002.) Last month, when President Biden announced plans to pull out, Liz Cheney — who wrote a book with her father that accused Barack Obama of abandoning Iraq and making America weaker — slapped back: “We know that this kind of pullback is reckless. It’s dangerous.”
For many years, she had no trouble swimming in Fox News bile. Given the chance to denounce the Obama birther conspiracy, she demurred, interpreting it live on air as people being “uncomfortable with having for the first time ever, I think, a president who seems so reluctant to defend the nation overseas.”
Thanks to that kind of reasoning, we ended up with a president who fomented an attack on the nation at home.
In her Post piece, Cheney wrote that her party is at a “turning point” and that Republicans “must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution.”
Sage prose from someone who was a lieutenant to her father when he assaulted checks and balances, shredding America’s Constitution even as he imposed one on Iraq.
Because of 9/11, Dick Cheney thought he could suspend the Constitution, attack nations preemptively and trample civil liberties in the name of the war on terror. (And for his own political survival.)
Keeping Americans afraid was a small price to pay for engorging executive power, which the former Nixon and Ford aide thought had been watered down too much after Watergate.
By his second term, W. had come around to his parents’ opinion that Cheney had overreached, and the vice president became increasingly isolated.
Liberals responded to Trump’s derangements by bathing the Bush-Cheney crowd in a flattering nostalgic light.
So, shockingly, the Republicans who eroded America’s moral authority — selling us the Iraq war, torture, a prolonged Afghanistan occupation and Sarah Palin — became the new guardians of America’s moral authority. Complete with bloated TV and book contracts.
Trump built a movement based on lies. The Cheneys showed him how it’s done.
Liz Cheney is preparing herself for a 2024 presidential run. Remember that she is a Cheney, and nothing appears to be what it is.
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