The grim reaper returns
There is something decidedly odd about the uneven hand of the Grim Reaper. Why, for example, do blood-sucking energy vampires like Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger continue to live on? Murdoch turned 91 this year and Kissinger will hit triple digits next May. Kissinger once famously proclaimed power an aphrodisiac. Is evil also a preservative?
Then there’s Dick Cheney. Cheney, a man who at one time every tout in Vegas would have deemed unbackable for an early grave at 60, turned 81 in January — and is still alive and kicking. Not only that, he’s making political commercials for his daughter Liz, in which he proclaimed without irony (of course, with the gracelessly wooden Cheney one can never really tell for sure) that “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” (He could be right, but few would doubt that the number two spot could fall to either Cheney himself or Kissinger. Watch the old guys battle it out for the silver.)
The former Vice President has stepped up to help his daughter keep her seat in Congress. The Wyoming primary is in just 9 days, and it’s looking more and more like Liz is going to lose. Though she maintains an optimistic stance, she could easily get primaried by her seriously whacked-out challenger, Republican Harriet Hageman, who drank a sufficient amount of the Koolaid to conclude that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and “a travesty.”( Whether or not she truly believes that no one can say. She is probably just uttering the correct crazy words in the correct crazy order to convince enough Wyoming voters to vote for her.)
And vote for her they will. According to the polls Hageman is ahead by double digits. What effect Liz Cheney’s father will have on the outcome remains to be seen. But he did say, “[Donald Trump] is a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and deep down I think most Republicans know it.”
Cheney went on to proclaim how proud he was of his daughter “for standing up to the truth, doing what’s right, honoring her oath to the Constitution when so many in our party are too scared to do so.” I am the kind of person who believes truth remains truth no matter who the messenger is. But I can’t help it, I still find it side-splittingly hilarious that a calculating, Machiavellian manipulator like Dick Cheney would say such a thing. Even so I’m glad he did.
And I have to wonder if Liz doesn’t have a bigger prize in mind. She knows the peril she is running by speaking out against Trump in the January 6 Committee, and she knows there’s a good chance she will have to surrender her seat in January because of it. Does she have her sights on the presidency? I wouldn’t be surprised.
Whatever the outcome, Cheney was probably right to call on her father for help. Despite the fact that when the Vice President left office in 2009 he was one of the most reviled politicians in American history, with a staggeringly low 13% approval rating. His name nevertheless carries weight and recognition in Wyoming. Perhaps a nudge from the undead, uncharismatic hand of her father is just what Liz needs. We’ll have to stick around and find out. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.