By Joseph Catena
When Dick Cheney served as vice president, he was the curmudgeon with the crooked scowl on his face – a warmongering Darth Vader, as he was termed by the Left. Cheney never met an international conflict he didn’t want to join. He was the classic Old Guard Republican, a hawkish interventionist with socially conservative beliefs and free trade fanaticism. As for daughter Liz, the former congresswoman from Wyoming, let’s just say, when you plant potatoes, you get potatoes. Liz is Daddy Dick’s carbon copy. Nonetheless, when you heard the name Cheney, you automatically associated it with Republican.
Now in 2024, they’re comrades of Kamala.
Donald J. Trump’s America First agenda and major allure to working class union voters caused Republican leaders to rethink and reprioritize. Trump drove yesterday’s Establishment into the abyss and made room for the common folks who want peace, pay their taxes and oppose open borders. They were also tired of the USA playing the role of global sugar daddy and financing numerous foreign regimes. For whatever reason, the Cheneys think this is party heresy – even though record numbers of Americans voted for Trump and identify with these themes. So, instead of being good teammates and supporting the new leader, they have switched jerseys for this election cycle.
Harris can have them, and the Democrats can keep them. The truth is their endorsement bears no weight. Who cares what the Cheneys have to say? The irony is, Republicans have paid no mind to their decision, one way or another. The dual Cheney endorsement was a major “Meh” moment in the GOP. In fact, Kamala parading Liz Cheney on the campaign trail may well backfire. Her positions on social issues are in stark contrast with the Democrat hierarchy. She is pro-life, pro-gun, pro-border wall and against federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. She actually voted with Trump more than 90 percent of the time while in Congress during his presidency. This was not the Liz Cheney Democrats were enamored with.
Then came January 6.
She went full throttle against the dethroned commander-in-chief. Liz Cheney excoriated Trump and basically blamed him for the anti-government tirade, although Trump was on record calling for more security. (Even Nancy Pelosi admitted she was the one who failed to act during a video clip shot for an HBO documentary.) Cheney also failed to remember Trump’s call for patriotic and peaceful protests. She accused him of coordinating “a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.” She was one of a handful of Republicans who supported the second impeachment of Trump. Suddenly, she turned into a bi-partisan hero by the party that once blasted her as being on the right-wing fringe.
Trump’s great revenge came in 2022. He endorsed Harriet Hageman over Cheney in a Congressional Republican primary, and she trounced Cheney by 37 points. Hell hath no fury like a congresswoman scorned. Cheney’s quest since her humiliating landslide loss has been to prevent Trump from rising back to power. So far, it’s not working.
Liz Cheney is part of the Republican past. That is a nice way of saying she is a has been. Even her voting record has been suspect during her last two years in office. As a lame duck, she voted for the massive 2023 Omnibus spending bill. She also voted for expanding NATO and dumping billions of taxpayer dollars into Ukraine aid. For every globalist neocon she brings into Kamala Harris’ fold, it pales in comparison to the droves of working-class Americans and union members – cultural common-sense conservatives, who are fleeing the Democrat plantation and joining Trump.
Dick Cheney’s endorsement means even less. His approval rating at the end of his vice presidency was somewhere in the teens. He has no sway in today’s GOP. Again, a nice way of saying has been. Perhaps the best way of capsulizing Dick Cheney is this: when I told a good friend of mine, who is a political junkie, that Cheney had endorsed Harris, he paused and said, “I didn’t even realize Dick Cheney is still alive.”
He is alive and well. As for the candidacy he and his daughter have endorsed, that might be another story.