How Dick Cheney Could Matter

The former VP opens the door.

“Here, presented for the first time, is an exhaustive list of the previous Republican presidents, vice presidents and nominees to these posts who have publicly said they will be voting for Trump in November:

1. Sarah Palin.

“That’s it. That’s the whole list.”¹ — The HuffPo

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Happy Saturday. We have a shortish newsletter today, but I think it’s important to put the latest Cheney endorsement into some context.

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Cheney’s Critical Mass

Photo by David Hume Kennerly

"In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.  

"As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris."

— Former Vice President Dick Cheney, September 6, 2024

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If you want to see the phenomenon of the Horseshoe Theory of Politics² in action, check out the reaction to Dick Cheney’s endorsement of Kamala Harris yesterday. The left, of course, despises the former VP as a “warmonger” and even a “war criminal,” while the MAGA right is apoplectic about his lèse-majesté to the Orange God King. So, we have a convergence of sorts.

Trump himself dismissed Cheney as “an irrelevant RINO.” A RINO is, of course, a Republican In Name Only, and Trump’s use of the term to describe the former two-term GOP VP reminds us for the gazillionth time that irony is well and truly dead.

But is Cheney really “irrelevant”?

As a contrarian, I’m willing to concede that on his own he is unlikely to move many votes. But that’s the point: He’s not on his own. There is a critical mass of conservative Republicans who are appalled and disgusted by Donald Trump but have been reluctant to take the ultimate step of endorsing his Democratic opponent. Earlier this week, Liz Cheney crossed that line. And now, her father has opened the door even further.

Like his daughter, Cheney did not frame his decision in left-right or conservative-liberal terms. He didn’t ask his fellow Republicans to abandon their conservative principles. Instead, he said: “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution.”

Will others follow? Most GOP politicians have already cast their lots with Trump. But the pols are not the only ones who might count this year.

This is worth remembering:

At a crucial moment in the nation’s history, the Cheneys secretly orchestrated an extraordinary op-ed in the Washington Post by all ten living former Defense Secretaries warning against Trump’s efforts to politicize the military.

The Post op-ed appeared on January 3rd, three days before the Trump-inspired Insurrection at the Capitol. Liz Cheney personally asked Trump’s first Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, to sign. “She was the one who generated it, because she was so worried about what Trump might do,” Cheney’s friend, Eric Edelman later said. “It speaks to the degree that she was concerned about the threat to our democracy that Trump represented.”

In her book, “Oath and Honor,” Liz Cheney described how they mobilized the SecDefs to defend the Constitution:

With my dad on board, we divvied up the remaining nine former secretaries. I agreed to contact Mattis, Panetta, and Rumsfeld. Eric [Edelman], meanwhile, would reach out to Secretaries Carter, Cohen, Esper, Gates, Hagel, and Perry. I also called retired General Jack Keane, Former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army….

A short while later I spoke to General Mattis. I described what we were seeing and hearing and why we thought this unprecedented public statement was necessary. He agreed immediately and told me where to send the draft letter for his review….

Eric Edelman contacted me not long after. He had reached former Secretary Bob Gates, who had served as Defense Secretary in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. “If Cheney's on, I'm on,” Gates told him.

Dick Cheney himself called Donald Rumsfeld. He read him the text of the open letter, which warned that “efforts to involve the US Armed Forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.”

Rumsfeld — a lifelong Republican loyalist — signed on.

It was an amazing document and a remarkable moment.

Can the Cheneys make a difference again this year? And what might that look like? Indulge me for a moment, while I imagine a television ad — or a series of ads — featuring a bipartisan group of patriots who would join Cheney in warning voters against restoring Trump to power.

Polls suggest that there are vanishingly few undecided voters out there. But how might wavering voters react to the testimony from Trump’s former Chief of Staff (John Kelly); former secretaries of defense (Mark Esper, James Mattis); and former national security advisor (H.R. McMaster) that Trump poses a real and present danger to the nation?

What if all of the living secretaries of defense — from both parties — joined them? Would that make a difference?

Honestly, I don’t know. But I’d like to find out.

Of gibberish and “sanewashing”

As you undoubtedly have heard, the other day Trump was asked about his specific policies to make childcare more affordable. His rambling, incoherent answer made everyone dumber. But, really, take a moment to read a transcript of his gibbering nonsense:

Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down — you know, I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that — because, look, child care is child care. It’s, couldn’t, you know, there’s something, you have to have it — in this country, you have to have it.

But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to — but they’ll get used to it very quickly — and it’s not gonna stop them from doing business with us. But they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.

Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care.

We’re gonna have — I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care.

I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, that I just told you about.

We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world.

Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about Make America Great Again. We have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation, so we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.

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If you are a reasonably sentient human being, your reaction is (1) WTAF, and (2) where can I get the last five minutes of my life back?

But this is how some folks in the media covered Trump’s flapdoodle:

And here’s the NYT:

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Parker Malloy writes:

This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former—and potentially future—president.

The consequences of this journalistic malpractice extend far beyond misleading headlines. By laundering Trump’s words in this fashion, the media is actively participating in the erosion of our shared reality. When major news outlets consistently present a polished version of Trump’s statements, they create an alternate narrative that exists alongside the unfiltered truth available on social media and in unedited footage.

Thank God for the dogs

Flashback. The boys.

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Eli and Auggie.

Photo by J.F. Riordan

1. “Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said he is “absolutely not” voting for Trump. Neither is former Vice President Dick Cheney, former vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, or, presumably, former Vice President Dan Quayle, who helped prevent Trump from stealing the election in 2020. Trump’s own former vice president, Mike Pence, whom Trump nearly got killed on Jan. 6, 2021, said “it should come as no surprise” that he will not endorse Trump.

“Former Republican President George W. Bush has not said if he’s voting for Trump, but in 2020 he reportedly said he would not support his reelection.”

2. “The horseshoe theory asserts that advocates of the far-left and the far-right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear continuum of the political spectrum, closely resemble each other, analogous to the way that the opposite ends of a horseshoe are close together.”