Why Liz Cheney Should Run For President

It would good for democracy--not for the narcissistic reasons she thinks, but a Cheney candidacy would be a good way to clear the air in the Republican Party and seal the Trump takeover.

Liz Cheney has a bright future ahead of her. She can geta well-paying gig on CNN, MSNBC or Fox. She can get a job lobbying for defense contractors. She can probably even get Netflix to do a documentary on her called “The Martyr”. Heck in the corrupt world that is Washington D.C., she can do all three of these things simultaneously.

This is on top of a recent past where she took a net worth of $7 million to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2016 and immediately doubled it in two years on a salary of $175K. Then that net worth skyrocketed to $44 million. So, Liz really doesn’t have any problems. But what she should do is run for president in 2024.

This might seem like an odd request coming from a space that is completely devoted to dismantling her and her daddy’s brand of Republicanism. But a Cheney run would be healthy for her supporters, meaning it would be good for the country. And yes, it would be good for Donald Trump.

Regular readers know that I’ve spent all of this year arguing that there are substantial policy differences between traditional Bush-Cheney Republicans and Trump Insurgents. The former has tried to gloss over those differences several different ways.

It started by saying Trump wasn’t presidential (i.e. he tweeted mean things). That sort of worked. I think any of us who support Trump have cringed more than a few times. But when the Bush-Cheney wing realized we found a booming economy, good judicial appointments and not getting involved in military conflicts abroad more important than some mean tweets, they had to recalibrate.

So they upped the ante and said Trump lacked character. This was a more high-voltage personal attack. But they really didn’t see the absurdity of people who were caught red-handed lying about WMDs in Iraq giving a lecture to…well, anyone…about character and integrity. There was a certain lack of self-awareness present.

Then it became to being about democracy. So we had to watch the January 6 Committee unfold. But it’s impossible to claim to be an advocate for democracy and the Constitution when you blatantly violate the norms of due process—like setting up a committee where the pro-Trump side is literally banned from participation. Or ignore what is now the blatantly obvious role of the FBI in instigating the events of that day.

So, as Cheney’s supporters continue to fan the flames of bad blood in a toxic environment, by making an argument that essentially boils down to “I’m better than you, even though there is nothing to substantiate that”, I’m going to make a suggestion to her—how about running for president on the issues you actually disagree with President Trump and those of us who support him on?

THE FOREIGN POLICY DIVIDE

There are people in the Republican Party who want an active, militarily aggressive foreign policy. They held power under both Bush presidencies. Then there are those of us who believe in non-intervention. Trump, true to his word, kept us out of foreign conflicts that had any real entanglements.

Where these two conflicting sides of Republican thinking agree is that we prefer to not hand over decision-making authority to the United Nations—or really, to even take the U.N. all that seriously. On the Democratic side, there is unity on giving the U.N. and other globalist institutions great authority—or at least some level of deference--on U.S. foreign policy, while also having a similar divide to the GOP on intervention/non-intervention.

On the Democratic side, the line might be roughly drawn between Hillary representing the pro-war side and Obama as the non-interventionist. On the GOP side, the Bushes and Cheneys are the long-time stewards of interventionism. Trump picked up those of us who were the neglected non-interventionists and gave us a voice.

Thus, you have two very big issues—the role (if any) that the United Nations and other global institutions should have on U.S. foreign policy. And to what extent (if any) the U.S. military should become involved in conflicts that don’t directly impact our national existence. The different intersections of these issues creates four broad schools of thoughts, two on each side of the aisle. I’m very firmly in the anti-UN, anti-intervention segment and have been since the early 1990s.

Now, call me an idealist, but this strikes me as the kind of subject it would be great to thrash out in a political primary and then in a general election. Regular readers know that I think the interventionist wing on both sides of the aisle is discredited—dramatically so—by the complete failure of the Middle East Wars that were started by Bush and Cheney, but done with the full cooperation of Hillary, John Kerry and Biden, all of whom were in the Senate and voted to authorize those wars. Obama and Trump were both early opponents of those wars and rightly reaped political benefit for being so, coming at it from different angles.

So, why can’t we have different candidates on both sides of the aisle speaking for all voters in each quadrant of this issue? Trump is the spokesperson for people like me. Cheney clearly desires to speak for the coalition that holds her father in such regard. She would have to beat out names like Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and Dan Crenshaw for the right to win the anti-UN/pro-intervention division title, but Liz is as good a pick as any. The Democrats can pick their own names to represent diverse opinion on their side of the aisle (that is, if any of them care about anything other than Trump-hate and pronouns anymore).

That’s why I think it would a Cheney candidacy would be good for the country. Just because I think a foreign policy vision is completely discredited doesn’t mean those that want to dig their heels in and keep pushing for it don’t deserve a voice and a venue to make that voice heard. Liz Cheney can be that voice and the 2024 Republican presidential primary can be that venue.

WHY TRUMP SHOULD WANT THE SHOWDOWN

A Cheney candidacy would also be good for Trump personally. First off, I’m just going to take a wild guess that running against Liz Cheney would get Donald’s juices really stirred. Call it a hunch.

Good campaigning also takes practice. Candidates make mistakes in the early going. Even when Trump first returned to the stump to start doing rallies again earlier this year, you could see he wasn’t completely on his game. The speeches could be a little disjointed, he was disconnected from his audience (i.e., boasting about the vaccine) and he got off-topic too easily. That was in January. Now, when you watch Trump, the speech is tight, the rhetoric crisp and he goes off-topic just enough to remind you of what you like about him, while not completely losing the audience. He's on his game.

The same can happen with a campaign. Trump would be far better off having his first televised debate in November of 2023 than in the heat of a presidential campaign in the fall of 2024. While an uncontested nomination path is great for an incumbent president, it’s also worth noting that incumbents (Trump included) have always performed poorly in their first debate. Letting Donald get a few batting practice swings in would be good for his own candidacy.

Finally, a Liz Cheney candidacy can help fulfill the political goal that this site is devoted to—the complete shattering of the old Republican coalition and replacing it with a voting bloc that’s middle-to-working class and multi-racial.

But how do you convince blacks and Hispanics to join a party? Especially when Hispanics were starting to make moves toward the GOP in 2000 and were promptly rewarded with the collapse of the housing market and their military family members sent off to the Middle East. Most people don’t follow the intricacies of political thought within the Republican Party and understandably bracket all of them together, absent the kind of distinctions I’ve been spelling out there.

It’s unfortunate, but it’s the nature of branding. This movement has already begun—especially with Hispanics—thanks to the combination of Trump and Democratic insanity, but there is still a need to completely rebrand the GOP.

Donald Trump knows more about branding than most people alive, but it would seem to me that a great way to restore the Republican brand within these traditionally Democratic communities would be to take a visible representative of the Old Republican Guard—like say, the daughter of a former vice-president—and take her to the woodshed on the national stage. Underscore all the differences that exist between the Trump Insurgency and the Republican Party.

Let those in black and Hispanic communities see how different our vision is from that of previous Republicans. And while we’re at, we’ll also debate trade policy and few other areas where long-simmering differences have finally exploded into the open.

THE LONG ROAD TO GET HERE

Look, I’ve been around these intra-GOP debates for a long time. From the first time I walked through the campus of Indiana University in 1992, collecting signatures for Pat Buchanan, a non-interventionist foreign policy was at the core of our dispute with mainstream Republican thinking. The issues were the same in 1996, and again in 2000 when Buchanan tried a third-party bid that I worked for, then living in Pennsylvania.

When I try to explain what Liz Cheney’s real issue is with Donald Trump, I’m talking from what is now over 30 years’ experience of dealing with intra-Republican disputes and familiarity with debates that have taken place more behind the scenes than on the front page.

And it’s a story from that 2000 campaign that stands out to me right now. Buchanan came to a town about thirty miles outside Pittsburgh. I forget the name, but it was right along the Monongahela River, in the heart of Steel Country. It was July and there was still hope we could get some momentum, perhaps be included in that fall’s debates, alongside Bush II and Al Gore and maybe do as well in November as Ross Perot had in 1992.

Buchanan was asked how you campaign for non-interventionism at a time when it seemed like the U.S. could just drop smart bombs and intervene without casualties. Or how you talk about misguided trade policy and its impact on the Rust Belt at a time when the stock market was booming.

Buchanan allowed that it was a hard sell, but said simply “We have to go make our case.” We believed that the long-term impact of unrestricted free trade would be devastating to the Rust Belt. We believed that constantly meddling in foreign conflicts would eventually lead to a disaster.  And we have been proven right.

Before taking too much of a victory lap, Buchanan wasn’t right about everything. He missed the vital importance legal Hispanic immigrants would have on national revival. While he was viciously and unfairly attacked as a racist (I got to know some people in his circle and know for a fact that this has always been a smear), it’s also fair to say that PJB did not foresee or understand just how much the legal Hispanic immigrants would prove to be our national salvation.

But he was right about trade. He was right about the disaster that is foreign intervention. And above all, he was right about persevering when circumstances were against us. We had to go make our case.

We made our case to the tune of complete humiliation in 2000. Nothing like waking up on Wednesday morning and finding out you got less than 1 percent of the national vote. We did it to the tune of complete isolation from mainstream political outlets, including conservative ones—many of whom branded us unpatriotic for opposition to the Iraq War. Fox News became the biggest corporate media cheerleader for the war. One prominent conservative outlet even said we had “turned our back on our country”. Buchanan started a small magazine called The American Conservative. Some of us wrote different blogs here and there. That was it.

We kept making our case in circles where it wasn’t always easy. I still remember a debate with my dad, God rest his soul, in August 2004 at a golf club in Wisconsin over dinner. He was convinced Bush had done the right thing in going into Iraq. I didn’t. We debated for literally hours. This was one of several debates I had with people whom I otherwise saw eye-to-eye with on political issues. I know I’m far from the only one. But the point is, we kept making our case.

Eventually, Donald Trump became our voice. We finally won the big one. And we got to see our policies enacted—and work—on the global stage. No new foreign wars—unprecedented for any president in the post-WWII era.  Continued draw down of troops in Afghanistan in spite of Pentagon resistance. An agreement in place for complete withdrawal (completely screwed up, after our guy had left office). A détente, however uneasy, with North Korea. And multiple peace agreements in the Middle East.

GROW UP & MAKE AN ARGUMENT

I tell this story, because it’s long past time for Liz Cheney, other politicians of her ilk and all their supporters to stop hiding behind these weasel phrases like “defending democracy” or their slurs like “insurrectionist” or pretending that their only problem with Trump is his “character”. Whatever that means.

It’s time to start making their case. Tell us why the Middle East Wars, in spite of everything that’s in front of us, were really a success and something we should model in Ukraine. Tell us why it was a good idea to extend NATO membership to Sweden and Finland—something that passed the Senate by a 95-1 vote, with only Republican Josh Hawley dissenting. Let’s debate Article 5 of NATO—the one that says an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all. And then you can make the case to military families that a potential regional dispute with Russia up in Scandinavia is worth more tours of duty.

Of the countless classic scenes in the 1992 film A Few Good Men, an underrated one is when Lt. Commander Joanne Galloway (Demi Moore) implores the lawyer, Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) to get past his habit of settling for plea bargains and says “I want you to stand up in court and make an argument.”

And that’s how I feel about the Cheney wing of the Republican Party. Stand up and make an argument! All of this stuff about Trump, this nonsense about defending democracy—it’s all just a cowardly way of hiding. It’s even teenage-girlish. Be a man. Get in the batters box, step into the pitch and make an argument. Who knows, maybe you’ll win. Or maybe not. But there’s worst things than getting buried under a landslide, like my side did in 2000. The worst thing is never having the guts to make your argument and never seeing the seeds that got planted years earlier come to fruition in a way you never thought possible.