Flying The Trump Coup

 LIZ CHENEY is a good person and a good American, and therefore, a terrible Republican. Because of the bizarre recent direction of the grand old party, the first two descriptors have become contradictory to the third. The Trump wing of the G.O.P., which constitutes the vast majority of it, wants Cheney to simply go away and shut up, and has told her so many times, in many different ways, in so many words, since last November's election, but she refuses to comply. That she is the third ranking republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives makes her words significant, and thus a considerable thorn in the side of the party of Trump. Cheney, who has not ruled out a run for president, in defiance of conservative orthodoxy, insists that the election was not stolen, that Donald Trump's oft repeated claim that it was was and remains a big lie, that he is unfit to lead the party going forward, and that anyone who persists in insisting that the election was stolen from him is a bad citizen, a liar, harmful to the nation and to the democratic process. Liz Cheney is, in short, a heretic among conservatives and Republicans. So low have Republicans sunk that telling the truth with integrity renders you an outcast within the party. The problem is that she was not satisfied to simply say all this several months ago shortly after the election and to leave well enough along, but that she continues to say it all, over, and over, and over again. The republican party has a big decision to make; whether to embrace or abandon Trump. Current indications are that it will embrace, since an overwhelming majority of members favor sticking with him. He is likely to either run for president again, or to remain a powerful force in politics as de facto party leader. Over the next couple of years Trump is likely to face federal criminal charges and various criminal indictments; most people are surprised to learn that there is no law preventing a convicted felon from being president. The current Republican party is much like a vicious, maddened animal trapped in a corner, confronting an implacable enemy; truth, and a majority of the American people. Covered with shame for having as its leader a disgraced, criminal former president who was voted out of office by a landslide but refused to accept defeat and staged an insurrection to try to overthrow the results of the election, and now promulgating a crazy agenda of voter suppression, anti transgender rights, and an assault on the first amendment rights of assembly and speech, an agenda designed to short up its most extremist base but extremely unpopular with the American people in general. It is time to put the wounded animal out of its misery.