~A column by Colleen O’Brien
On a blustery Sunday in the Midwest, I watched giant snowflakes fall and disappear on the still warm asphalt as I was hit by whining gusts of wind whistling around me at up to 30 mph. The preview of winter weather whipped my hair like an eggbeater and scattered fat flakes and red and yellow leaves every which way.
By the following Thursday I shuffled along leaf-covered sidewalks in calm 65-degree weather.
By the end of the week, snow covered the ground.
Autumn weather in this latitude mimics our politics from coast to coast and border to border. As a typical fall-to-winter day moaned around and through my house, I listened to an old and still shocking speech from Liz Cheney, whose famous Republican father Dick Cheney had just died. He created many days of angry politics in his time; reading about him I was reconnected with Cheney lore.
Liz Cheney’s speech from a mere year ago — Oct. 3, 2024 — startled Republicans and Democrats equally. Like her father, she personified Republican politics, yet she said out loud that she endorsed a Democrat to beat far-right Republican Donald Trump.
Democrat candidate Kamala Harris was running for president of the United States against the former boss of Liz. “A depraved” man, Liz called Donald that day.
Three-term Republican representative from Wyoming, Liz condemned Trump blatantly during that speech: he was “a fundamental threat”; “sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol”; was “petty, vindictive and cruel”; unfit to lead the nation. He threatened the life of his own vice president; he should “never be trusted with power again”; for three hours he watched on TV the brutal molestation of humans, buildings, art and public servants’ personal belongings before finally calling off his thugs.
By that summer of ‘21, appointed as vice-chair on the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, Liz became instrumental in the final report placing the blame on Donald Trump for inciting the riot and engaging in a “multi-part conspiracy.”
She had no more time for him – not as a man and definitely not as a president. Three years later, she was asking voters to follow her lead. “Do not let anyone lie to you about what happened and what anyone did,” Liz said.
She then reminded us of John Adams, our second president [1797 to 1801], who said, “May none but honest and wise men rule under this roof.”*
If only.
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You can look online for Liz Cheney’s Oct. 3, 2024, endorsement speech for Kamala Harris. It boosted my spirits in the wearying forever-fight to unseat the pitiful human we wound up with as our President
*In an aside to her audience, Cheney said with a smile that she believed Adams meant the ladies, too, for it was his wife Abigail who reminded Adams as he and other founders argued a Constitution into place: “Don’t forget the ladies,” Abigail wrote.
