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January 07, 2024
By David Codrea, Politics Field Editor
“Liz Cheney, whose opposition to Donald Trump’s presidency alienated her from her fellow Republicans, has said she would prefer Democrats to win in the 2024 elections over members of her own party because she feared the US was ‘sleepwalking into dictatorship,’” The Guardian reports . “I believe very strongly in those principles and ideals that have defined the Republican party, but the Republican party of today has made a choice, and they haven’t chosen the Constitution,” Cheney told CBS’ Sunday Morning. “And so, I do think it presents a threat if the Republicans are in the majority in January 2025.”
She was parroting a narrative Democrats and the media (pretty much the same thing) have been advancing as a backup plan in case their fabricated lawfare and election disqualification plots against Trump don’t pan out. With Trump’s poll numbers currently showing the other GOP contenders eating his dust, and with Dotard-in-Chief Joe Biden’s corruption and dangerous incompetence becoming too glaring for Party leaders to ignore, one of the backup plans is to play the dictator card to ludicrous levels . Hyperventilating useful idiots have been leveling wholly fabricated charges like Trump will annex Canada, shoot the First Lady, make himself Führer, terminate the Constitution and declare “Marshall [sic] Law.”
The breathless hysteria got a boost in “The Trump Dictatorship” by The Washington Post’s token neocon, Robert Kagan . He’s presented as a “conservative” by the media to feign fair-mindedness, while conveniently failing to mention he’s a globalist insider married to a high-ranking career Democrat diplomat, and that he left the Republican Party after Trump was nominated and endorsed Hillary Clinton. Cheney’s on the same page. And by representing Democrats as the party of the Constitution, she shows what an utter fraud she is (and always has been). But don’t take my word for it, take hers. NRA did.
“YOUR VOTE DEFENDS FREEDOM! – VOTE LIZ CHENEY FOR U.S. HOUSE!” the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund advised members in a 2020 Action Alert . “Liz is a staunch defender of the Second Amendment and has earned your vote by protecting your fundamental right to self-defense from those who attempt to eradicate it!”
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It wasn’t a new relationship either. Along with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, she had headlined a 2015 NRA Women’s Leadership Forum “Ring of Freedom” Summit. And her initial election to Congress relied heavily on NRA support.
“As a lifetime member of the NRA, I know that for more than 145 years the NRA has stood at the forefront of protecting the 2nd Amendment rights of all Americans, and I am honored to have their support and endorsement,” Cheney declared on Facebook in 2016. “The stakes in this year’s election could not be higher for gun owners.”
The stakes in 2024 could not be higher, either. If Trump gets sidelined and/or the Republicans somehow manage to blow it (and don’t put that past them), the legislative floodgates will open and the Supreme Court itself will be in danger of being expanded or having “conservative” members replaced. Heller and Bruen aren’t immune to being reversed. This is what “staunch defender” Liz Cheney is now publicly committed to enabling. And she knows full well the Democrat Party platform on guns calls for :
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“Ending the epidemic of gun violence … universal background checks, end online sales of guns and ammunition, close dangerous loopholes … prevent individuals who have been convicted of hate crimes from possessing firearms … ban the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high capacity magazines … incentivize states to enact licensing requirements for owning firearms and extreme risk protection order laws … [require] that guns be safely stored in homes [and] repeal … the law that shields gun manufacturers from civil liability.”
Voters paying attention could have seen Cheney’s malleable self-serving loyalties coming by the company she keeps. In 2009 she partnered with Bill Kristol to found Keep America Safe, a nonprofit advocate for Bush–Cheney national security positions. Kristol is the Never Trumper who has called Democrats “foolish” and “cowardly” for not demanding more infringements, declaring "I don't think [Americans] have a right to semi-automatic, quasi-machine guns that can shoot a hundred bullets at a time,” and asserting the “lazy” white working class should be replaced by “new Americans.”
Her old man, of shoot-your-quail-hunting-buddy-in-the-face notoriety, was no great shakes on 2A, either, despite co-hosting the NRA women’s forum and accepting a flintlock rifle at the 2004 Annual Meeting to a thunderous standing ovation after promising “confident, steady, principled leadership.” That must be why he speculated on edicts like “limiting the size of the magazine that you can buy to go with a semiautomatic weapon … maybe it’s appropriate to re-establish that kind of thing,” following the 2013 Tucson mass shooting where Gabby Giffords was shot.
When candidates first run for office and before they have a voting record, NRA practice is to add a “Q” to their letter grade to indicate it’s being assigned based on answers to their questionnaire. In order to get their endorsement, Cheney would have had to promise, among other things, that she opposed legislation banning semi-automatic firearms and their ammunition and magazines, supported right-to-carry, and opposed legislation ending private sales. Compare her pledge in exchange for money, support, and votes, to the platform of the party she now says she’ll support. What promises has she made and now discarded? Don’t count on her releasing a copy of her questionnaire and making her answers available to the public. And that should tell us everything we need to know.
If you have any thoughts or comments on this article, we’d love to hear them. Email us at FirearmsNews@Outdoorsg.com .
