Lee Heidhues 1.6.2022
It’s an undisputed fact that American politics have been turned upside down.
Former Republican stalwart vice president Dick Cheney is one of the most unrepentant conservatives in the last 50 years. Today he was showered with love by the Democrats when he appeared in Congress to commemorate the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s attempted coup d’etat on January 6, 2021.
Most Democrats have unceasingly and with good reason scorned Cheney when he worked in the Ford White House, served as a member of Congress, a member of George H.W. Bush’s cabinet and later as VP in the George W. Bush administration.
It was Cheney who advocated the most draconian civil rights abuses in the so called War on Terror after 9/11.It was Cheney who cheer led for the U.S. to invade Iraq in 2003.
The Democrats have a short memory or are willing to forget his hard line policy positions. It’s also true that the Republican party has gone so far off the rails that someone like Dick Cheney is considered a moderate influence.
Excerpted from BuzzFeed News 1.6.2022
WASHINGTON — Democrats lined up to greet former vice president Dick Cheney in the House chamber Thursday, a rare moment of outreach to a onetime party villain who is now one of the few high-profile Republicans to fully acknowledge what happened before and during last year’s fatal Capitol riots.
His daughter Rep. Liz Cheney is under attack by her own party as she continues to speak out against former president Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
“My daughter can take care of herself,” the former vice president told reporters.
Cheney was not the only Democratic villain of the early 2000s to make an unusual reappearance for the insurrection anniversary. Karl Rove, for years Bush’s top political adviser, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed condemning the riot “apologists” in the Republican Party for not being honest about what happened on Jan. 6. “If Democrats had done what some Trump supporters did on that violent Jan. 6, Republicans would have criticized them mercilessly and been right to do so,” he wrote.
The former vice president, member of Congress, cabinet secretary, and White House official has not exactly been beloved by Democrats over the last half-century. Throughout the presidency of George W. Bush, Cheney was portrayed by Democrats in and out of Congress as the dark force driving the president and the functional Republican power center, from the Iraq War to any number of domestic political fights.
But Cheney, and his now out-of-style brand of neoconservatism, is not aligned with where the party is today.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kadiagoba/dick-cheney-january-6-capitol-republicans
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