Abraham Lincoln famously once said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
There may not be a more fitting quote to describe Liz Cheney’s time as a Wyoming congresswoman. As expected, Liz Cheney lost her election Tuesday night. Vying for her third term in Congress, Cheney could not fool all of her constituents this time.
After being humiliated in the primary, Cheney gave somewhat of a concession speech on Tuesday night, invoking the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. Her hubris was quite shocking, odd, and, in many ways, laughable.
“Abraham Lincoln was defeated in elections for the Senate and the House before he won the most important election of all. Lincoln ultimately prevailed, he saved our union, and he defined our obligation as Americans for all of history,” Cheney said.
But Liz Cheney is no Abraham Lincoln. Not even close.
In reality, she’s probably not even a Millard Fillmore. She was an establishment Republican never-Trumper who seemed only to care about settling political squabbles during her second term and who reputedly ignored her Wyoming constituents. That is why she was voted out of office.
Cheney did not like President Donald Trump. She’s not the first Republican to feel that way and won’t be the last. However, during her second term in Congress, that is essentially all she seemed to care about. Her entire political career became synonymous with attacking Donald Trump instead of working toward defeating the Democrats’ agenda.
The two did not even have to be mutually exclusive — Cheney just made them that way. As Cheney prioritized “getting Trump,” Democrats chipped away at the moral fiber of the country.
Liz Cheney spoke out against Jan. 6 and voted to impeach Trump. And, quite honestly, while many Trump supporters disagreed with that decision, that was her right to do so. Cheney had every right to speak out against Trump if that is what her conscience told her to do.
But what frustrated most people about Cheney is that she never criticized the despotic Democratic platform and the damage it was doing to this country with the same vigor she attacked Trump. It felt as if Cheney perceived Trump was a bigger threat to the country than the political party that says things like “men can have babies,” redefines the definition of recession, and supports critical race theory and gender ideology being taught in schools.
She didn’t speak out against the BLM and antifa riots with such fervor as she spoke out against the Jan. 6 riot. She didn’t stand up to Democrats who vilified police officers and perpetuated the lie that police were hunting down black men. Cheney sounded the alarm about political violence when she could link it to Trump, but she said nothing about the violent attack on her Republican colleague Lee Zeldin.
Abraham Lincoln was a politician who cared about morality, ending slavery, and saving the country. Liz Cheney is a politician who cares about being a celebrity and turning herself into a martyr so that she can run for president. She received over a million dollars in contributions from California. She was endorsed by Hollywood celebrities Kevin Costner and Matthew McConaughey. Cheney wanted to be famous first and a public servant second. Her priorities were not to help the everyday, ordinary people in Wyoming or the country.
I would have had zero problem with Cheney if she had fought against the Democrats’ political agenda with the same energy she showed in going up against Trump. But she let a personal vendetta get in the way of her job. Cheney thus learned the hard way what Abraham Lincoln said over 150 years ago: “If you forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.”
