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“Today we face a threat America has never seen before,” Cheney said Tuesday evening. “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,” she continued. “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.”
In case the part about “Those who refuse to accept the rulings of our courts” part wasn’t clear enough, she then took the next step in connecting what she was saying to her own party, saying “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.”
Warning of a coming cold war with China, Cheney said “Attacks against our democratic process and the rule of law empower our adversaries and feed Communist propaganda that American democracy is a failure.” That is why “We must speak the truth, our election was not stolen, and America has not failed.”
This was a thoroughly conservative speech, one that framed the importance of democracy in terms of conflict with communism, that cast the United States as gaining leadership through a role as a global defender of democracy (taking a very partial and slanted history of the U.S. role), that repeatedly embraced the legacy of former President Ronald Reagan. Cheney cited her experiences around the world, from Kenya to Russia, to claim American exceptionalism as a democracy, and by so doing, to underline Trump’s betrayal of the nation’s values—and the betrayal of the Republicans who continue to follow Trump and embrace his lies. This was brutal in part because there can be no serious claim that Cheney is somehow going over to the Democrats. She is a rock-ribbed conservative who cannot and will not swallow the lies the Republican Party is now pushing.
There can also be no serious claim—though heaven knows House Republicans are trying—that Cheney is simply pursuing a personal spat with Trump, whose name she never used either in her Tuesday night speech or in her Wednesday comments. Though she addressed the Trump question more directly in response to questions Wednesday morning, she framed her speech around democracy, looking back decades to lift it up and to emphasize its centrality going forward.
Cheney’s fellow Republicans have all but put their hands over their ears and started shouting “la la la I can’t hear you.” For them, Donald Trump rules above every principle. Cheney is out of House Republican leadership, and Rep. Elise Stefanik—far less conservative but fully on Team Trump, at least as long as it benefits her to be—will be voted in on Friday, the only candidate to replace Cheney.
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