The Party of Lies and a champion of the truth

Liz Cheney is not willing to tolerate the lie that Joe Biden stole last year's election, and she lost her position in the Republican leadership as a result.

She could have lobbied her colleagues in an attempt to save her job. But she didn't.  She knew that it wouldn't have helped.

Cheney understands where the Republican Party is right now. I doubt that she's under any illusions about changing that. But she has decided to stand on her principles and go down fighting for what she knows to be right rather than surrender her conscience to the Orange God-Emperor at Mar-a-Lago.

It will be interesting to see whether she's re-elected. I personally have my doubts. This is Profiles in Courage stuff.

Win or lose next year, she might very well run for President as a Republican in 2024. It would be a hopeless crusade. The party is not likely to be any more rational in 2024 than it is right now. It would almost be worth re-registering as a Republican just to stand with her in the fight, though. Of course, the Republican Party is doomed. It's beyond fixing. But any way you look at it, today's vote by the House Republican caucus to oust its chair for insisting on the truth is a critical step in the inevitable process of replacing it.

It's too early for a conservative third party to succeed. There is always the danger that it might split the votes of the "coalition of the decent" with Joe Biden and get a more intelligent version of Trump elected next time. As the birth pangs of the Republican Party showed, the gestation period for a new party takes decades even if, like the Whigs in their day and the Know-Nothing Republicans in ours, one of the two major parties is moribund. But especially if President Biden doesn't seek re-election and the Democrats nominate someone further to the left, the danger is also there that decent conservatives might find themselves unable to vote for either major party's nominee. We could be back in the same soup we were stewing in in 2016.

This time, having somebody of Liz Cheney's stature to fill the role Evan McMullin and Gary Johnson did back then would doubtless have a greater impact. It's hard to know how it all will play out. But it's clear that the orphans of the sane and decent right no longer have merely champions here and there like Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse and Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins and Larry Hogan and Jeff Flake. We have a leader.

And today, Liz Cheney paid the price for being a leader. It might end her political career, but it could very well be the making of an enviable role in our nation's history.