Against Trump's "Big Lie," Liz Cheney Backs GOP Voter Suppression
Rep Cheney joins Georgia's Raffensperger to stand against Trump, but for voting restrictions
Rep. Liz Cheney just this month came out as something of a “Profile In Courage” when she stood up against Donald Trump's “Big Lie,” his baseless falsehood that somehow the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him due to rampant fraud.
And for her stand — which, really, shouldn't be any unique endeavor, given that she only was acknowledging objective reality — the Wyoming congresswoman was unceremoniously booted from her perch as the No. 3 official in House GOP leadership.
Maybe the Kennedy family ought to put the brakes on before Cheney's “Profile In Courage” goes to the press, however.
If you thought that given her high-profile stance against Trump's election lie — and the high price she had to pay for it — that Liz Cheney then would be uniquely positioned to be a Republican champion against voter suppression efforts going on nationwide, sadly, you would be wrong.
Cheney's happy to stand up to Trump and his “Big Lie,” but when it comes to the onslaught of voting-restriction bills her fellow Republicans are peddling in the name of that “Big Lie,” Cheney's more than happy to toe the party line.
That's what's come out in a new interview with Cheney by Jonathan Swan of Axios.
Cheney, almost willfully, is trying to have it both ways.
Consider this exchange between Swan and Cheney:
JONATHAN SWAN, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, AXIOS: You don`t see any linkage between Donald Trump saying the election is stolen and then Republicans in all of these state legislatures rushing to put in place these restrictive voter laws?
REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): Well, I think you have to look at the specifics of each one of those efforts.
SWAN: What was the big problem in Georgia that needed to be solved by a new law? What was the big problem in Texas? What was the big problem in Florida? What was that -- these laws are coming all around the states and like, what are they solving for?
CHENEY: I think you`ve got to look at each individual state law. But I think what we can all agree on --
SWAN: You can`t divorce them from the context. Come on.
CHENEY: Well, yes, but I think what we can agree on is that what is happening right now is really dangerous.
Cheney is attempting to put Trump's lie “in a silo,” Swan writes.
“She doesn't accept the larger context: Republicans spent years fertilizing the soil for voters to believe that voter fraud is rampant,” he adds.
The sad thing is that Cheney's not alone.
Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia Republican secretary of state who not only defended the fairness of his state's election but had to fend off threatening phone calls from Trump himself, also has apparently gone all-in on GOP voter suppression.
Meanwhile, recent opinion polling from Ipsos and Reuters finds 61 percent of Republicans believe the election was stolen from Donald Trump — and 53 percent of Republicans believe that Trump is the true president right now.
It's fairly impossible to separate the new Republican voter suppression bills and their underpinnings in Trump's “Big Lie,” Swan said in an interview with MSNBC.
“And the fact is, there are 400 -- more than 400 of these bills that have been introduced since the election, 90 percent of them primarily, predominantly pushed by Republicans. So, it`s not like it`s one state, it`s happening across the country. It`s happening in almost every state. Now, some of them are getting passed, and as you say, the details are different, but there is a common thread throughout these,” he said. “Many of the provisions in these laws are responding directly to some of the concerns that Donald Trump has raised.
“So, it`s just not plausible to say that there`s not a connection. There`s obviously evidently a connection between Donald Trump lying about the election and these laws being implemented,” he added.
So what should all of this tell us?
Well, any hope that you had that the few like Cheney and Raffensperger could become the larger salvation of the Republican Party was clearly misplaced.