When Liz Cheney went to a hearing to investigate the U.S. Capitol riot, she made a disastrous warning to the party to which she had devoted her entire life.
“I say this tonight to my fellow Republicans who stand for the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump will leave, but your disgrace will continue,” he said.
Once the third highest-ranking Republican and a member of a political dynasty, Cheney has become one of Trump’s strongest critics since Jan. 6.
He has voted to oust him, has repeatedly criticized the billionaire for attacking the Capitol, and has even written an opinion piece accusing the former president of undermining the very elements needed to make democracy work.
In the process, she has earned the wrath of her colleagues and has become an outcast of her own party.
With few friends left in Congress, Liz Cheney looks at the barrel of a difficult primary race and midterm election. (Reuters: Jonathan Ernst)
His actions could very well end his political career. The Republican National Committee voted to censure her for her involvement in the Jan. 6 investigation, while high-profile Republicans have called her a “snake.”
Trump, enraged by Cheney’s attacks, has called on his voters to oust her and backed his rival in the Wyoming primary in August.
But Cheney remains unperturbed, stubbornly pursuing the former president “no matter what the short-term political consequences.”
This week, when she took a leading role in the prime-time hearings investigating the January 6 riots, she was just one of two Republicans who were part of the nine-member panel.
Surrounded by Democrats and watched by outraged Trump supporters, she calmly argued that Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-party plan to cancel the election.
Aware of the chants of the mutineers for “hanging Mike Pence,” the president responded with this sentiment: “Perhaps our fans have the right idea. Mike Pence “deserves it,” he told the audience.
Cheney seems to be caught up in a battle with Trump over the very soul of the Republican Party. The result could consolidate his place in history or end his chances of becoming president someday.
The girl born in power
Liz Cheney was born in the Republican establishment.
His father, Dick Cheney, held an important position in the party for decades, playing a key role in multiple administrations.
Dick Cheney, a prominent Republican party figure, served as George W Bush’s vice president. (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)
Before becoming vice president under George W Bush, he was the youngest person ever to be appointed head of the White House.
But in 1976, when his boss, President Gerald Ford, failed to get re-elected, Dick Cheney decided it was time to run for office.
“It didn’t make sense to go through Washington,” he wrote in his 2011 memoirs.
“[I]If you want to run for office, you have to leave DC and settle somewhere in the country where you will one day have the opportunity to run. ”
Liz Cheney’s father held numerous influential positions within the Republican Party for decades. (Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein)
He took his wife and two daughters, Liz and Mary, back to his hometown of Casper, Wyoming, so that he could run to be the sole member of the state Congress.
Once elected, the Cheneys returned to the center of American power where Liz graduated from high school and eventually worked as a lawyer and consultant.
His father was hand-picked as Bush’s formula mate, quickly becoming one of the most influential vice presidents in U.S. history.
Dick Cheney, who appeared in the headlines to push the war in Iraq and accidentally shoot a friend in the face during a hunting expedition, was considered a Darth Vader-like villain by Democrats.
But in the meantime, Liz was quietly building a career of her own at the party they both loved.
“Certainly in the United States, being part of a political dynasty never hurts in terms of media recognition and exposure,” said David Smith, an associate professor of U.S. and foreign policy at the U.S. Center for Studies. .
“But she had really forged her own legislative career as a Republican legislator.
“In fact, she was highly valued by the Republican Party, and that wasn’t just about who her father was.”
In 2012, he followed his father’s advice and returned to Wyoming so he could make his own offer for a seat at the table.
He had no idea that his candidacy for the Senate would force him to choose between his ambitions and his own sister.
The political career that broke the Cheney family
Despite her family’s deep roots, Wyoming gave Liz Cheney a cold reception when she returned home.
Named the “Land of the Great Sky” for its spectacular scenery, the state is the least populated in America.
Those who choose to live in this rugged but beautiful land are mostly ranchers, cowboys, and hunters who vote Republican.
But Cheney, despite her famous last name, was seen as Washington’s top insider.
Even when he returned to Wyoming, he raised his eyebrows and settled in the city of Jackson Hole, a luxurious ski resort that attracts celebrities and extremists.
Its most famous residents include Kanye, Harrison Ford and John Mars, the billionaire baron of the chocolate bar.
Liz Cheney returned to Wyoming to run for the Senate, but was baffled as a member of Washington’s elite. (Reuters)
Cheney also irritated locals by jumping on the bandwagon when current Sen. Mike Enzi, who was also his father’s fly fisherman, had not yet decided to retire.
Republican primaries soon got ugly, with mysterious automated calls to Wyoming residents claiming that Cheney was “aggressively promoting gay marriage.”
Whoever was behind the calls seemed to know that marital equality was not only a troubled social issue in the United States, but also within the Cheney family.
Mary Cheney had talked to her parents when she was still in high school and eventually fell in love with his future wife, Heather Pope.
Her father had been involved in a complicated act as leader of the Republican Party, expressing her personal support for marital equality, but saying it was a matter for the states.
But with her Senate candidacy at stake, Liz Cheney was unequivocal.
“I’m very pro-life and I’m not pro-gay marriage,” she said.
“I love Mary very much, I love her family so much. This is just an issue we don’t agree on.”
Liz Cheney’s unfortunate run in the Senate in 2012 led to a bitter breakup with her sister Mary. (AFP: Jeff Haynes)
The fall was quick.
Mary used Facebook to declare her sister “on the wrong side of history” and said her policy “treats my family as second-class citizens.”
When the family schism became national news and the sisters stopped talking, Liz Cheney dropped out of the Senate.
But she did not give up.
Two years later, with the help of family friends Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld, he opted for his father’s former seat in the United States House of Representatives.
He won with 60 percent of the vote and quickly rose through the ranks of the Republican House leadership.
“Liz Cheney has always had her own power base within the Republican Party,” Dr. Smith said.
“She has had this reputation as a loyal Conservative and a loyal Republican, but still one who is ready to act independently, because she has a strong position in the Republican Party.”
With Trump in the White House and Republicans in control of Congress, Cheney was firmly seated in the inner circle of power.
Liz Cheney voted with Donald Trump for the vast majority of her time in office. But his refusal to accept the result of the 2020 elections was too far-fetched. (AFP: Jim Watson)
He voted according to President Trump’s political positions about 92.9% of the time.
“He really had a lot of position in his party, basically, until the end of the Trump administration,” Dr. Smith said.
Like many other powerful Republicans, Cheney had welcomed Trump, as well as his millions of voters, with open arms.
But when he lost the 2020 election and refused to admit defeat, the establishment realized they no longer had control of the party.
While many of his colleagues remained silent, Cheney decided that he had a moral obligation to distance the country from the “dangerous and undemocratic cult of Trump’s personality.”
The day everything changed
On the morning of January 6, 2021, Liz Cheney received a worried phone call from her father.
He had just seen the president speak to a large crowd of his supporters outside the White House.
“We have to get rid of the weak Congress, the people, the bad guys, the Liz Cheneys of the world,” Trump said.
“We have to get rid of them. We have to get rid of them.”
Cheney was due to give a speech at the Capitol when members of Congress certified the results of the election, and his father was deeply concerned about his safety.
By publicly acknowledging that Joe Biden was the next president of the United States, Cheney had lost Trump’s favor forever.
“It’s about being able to tell your kids that you got up and did the right thing,” he told his father, according to the New York Times.
But he never got to make his speech.
As hundreds of supporters of the president stormed the Capitol building, she and other politicians had to be evacuated.
Members of Congress were forced to flee when rioters tried to enter the House of Commons. (AP: Andrew Harnik)
In the chaos, Republican Congressman Jim Jordan offered to escort the women in the chamber.
The staunch supporter of Trump was part of a key group of members of the Republican House that organized the party’s effort to oppose the counting of electoral votes.
“As these maniacs pass by, I’m in the hallway and he said, ‘We have to get the women out of the hallway. Let me help you,'” he later recalled.
I shook his hand and said, “Get away from me. You did that. ”
In the days that followed, Cheney was the top 10 Republicans who voted to oust the outgoing president for inciting …