CommentsACCORDING TO LIZ - One day after a Proud Boys Trump supporter tried to break into an FBI building in Ohio and died after fleeing and shooting at the police pursuing him, the Republican messaging was… you can’t trust the FBI.
After being foiled in his initial attempt to enter the building Ricky Shiffer, who posted on Trump’s Truth Social that people should prepare themselves for combat, shot at Ohio state troopers from his car… with the predictable and terminal result.
In an earlier post following the FBI’s search for classified materials at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, Shiffer urged people to kill the FBI "on sight and be ready to take down other active enemies of the people and those who try to prevent you from doing it."
Last week’s attack happened shortly after a senior House Republican was anonymously quoted in Politico: “The base has lost its mind. If Trump decides to call them to arms, then I think he could get another Jan. 6.”
As an aside, the very best quote on the FBI search comes from Mary Trump, the estranged niece of the ex-prez. “Merrick Garland is playing chess. Donald can only play checkers. So, he’s being outmaneuvered.”
However, the one Republican with guts and honor will probably see her Congressional political career go down in flames on Tuesday.
All polls point to an overwhelming loss for Liz Cheney in the GOP primary for Wyoming’s single House seat on Tuesday with a University of Wyoming survey showing Cheney trailing her Trump-supported opponent by a painful 30 percentage-point margin. A kind of spread that is normally only seen between incumbents and rank newcomers.
A win would be a wonderful thumbing of her nose at pundits and Trumpists alike.
But even losing her House seat, especially after being stripped of her stature as chair of the House Republican Conference, will not be the end of the road for the impressive Vice Chair of the House January 6th Committee.
In fact, anyone wishing to reinstate a reasonable Republican opposition to the Democrats – and their party leadership’s constant kneeling for compromise over standing up for policies that prioritize the people – should seriously consider Cheney as Presidential material.
She has all the conservative credentials – fiscal and moral: reduction of regulatory burdens, overseas intervention if necessary to protect America, protecting the unborn and the moral ideology of orthodox Christianity.
And she has demonstrated the critical leadership skills of courage and integrity in the face of criticism and the tantrums of the one-that-was.
If Cheney wants to continue her campaign against Trump, she will need to remake the party in her image with all of its traditional mainstream values. And then the real Republicans should seriously consider running Liz Cheney for president. Respect for her integrity and credibility should help scrape together enough disaffected Democrats to offset the loss of the Trumpists.
In truth, instead of kowtowing to them and the partisan plutocracy funding that has taken over American conservatives, true Republicans need to break away and double down on the policies of Ike.
Dwight David Eisenhower, respected WW2 general was courted by both parties, set the tone for the modern Republican Party, emphasizing fiscally conservative policies with a focus on reducing government spending. Somehow, monitoring people’s bedroom behavior was not high on his list of what a government should prioritize.
He presided over the greatest growth in modern American history, an era of unparalleled economic prosperity and technological advances, advocated for equal opportunity for all, and the importance of taking action wisely best summed up in his 1959 State of the Union as:
“America is best described by one word: freedom. If we hope to strengthen freedom in the world, we must be ever mindful of how our own conduct reacts elsewhere. No nation has ever been so floodlighted by world opinion as the United States is today. Everything we do is carefully scrutinized by other peoples throughout the world. The bad is seen along with the good.
“Because we are human, we err. But as free men we are also responsible for correcting the errors and imperfections of our ways.”
Unfortunately, his party subsequently subscribed to other ideologies, ones that emphasized denial of all things science, doubling down on lies, and meddling in foreign countries’ affairs. And, far from reducing government spending, drove it to new heights by subsidizing corporations and buying whole-heartedly into the military-industrial complex with its attendant greed, pollution, and evil.
To restore a modicum of credibility as the party of the Republic it purports to represent, the Republican party needs a reboot. It must create a new base by epitomizing policies that track its core conservative values.
Yes, reduce expenditures but not at the cost of ordinary people. Perhaps restrict abortion at-will but provide for mother and child. Get out of the brinkmanship of forever wars that suck the country’s coffers dry. And, yes, tailor regulations to be less onerous but not for the sole benefit of big business.
Or it will continue to drive potential voters away with more displays of Trump tantrums, murderous Proud Boys and lockstep faithfulness to politicians who aren’t worth the paper ballots on which their names are printed.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
