Liz Cheney Visits Campus, Speaks on Democracy

Donald Trump’s election and presidency transformed the American political landscape. The former president upended the status quo, disobeying norms and conventions, and reshaped the Republican Party all before he even took office. Trump’s disruptive candidacy quickly drew the ire of many establishment Republicans, as his populist rhetoric often conflicted with the “respectable” image that the Grand Old Party had cultivated for decades. The last straw for these old-school Republicans was January 6, when a band of Trump supporters stormed the US capitol. After the event, some in the Republican Party broke with Trump, attacking him for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Chief among these anti-Trump conservatives has been former Congresswoman Liz Cheney. Since losing her 2022 primary election to a pro-Trump challenger, Cheney has undertaken a speaking tour of the country, hawking her book and calling on Republicans to turn against the former president. In her attacks, she has gone so far as to wish for a Democratic victory in 2024, which has earned criticism from many Republicans, even from those who in no way whole-heartedly support the former president. For her latest venue on this tour, on the auspicious eve of the third anniversary of January 6, 2021, Cheney chose our very own Dartmouth College. 

I sat down with Liz Cheney in a meeting room in the basement of the Hanover Inn several hours before she was due to give her address. Unfortunately, I was allotted only five minutes for my interview, as the former Congresswoman was too busy while at Dartmouth to devote more time. Other newspapers on campus were afforded an equal timeslot. Cheney was—at the very least—not playing favorites. Seeking to make the most of my time, I spent little time on introductions and started quickly with my first question. 

I first asked the Congresswoman about her focused attacks on the Republican Party and Donald Trump. Since January 6, Cheney has opposed Trump vocally, and once she left office last January she has continued to attack him. Yet, rather than support another Republican candidate as an alternative, she seems to have turned totally against the Republican Party. 

Notably, she publicly expressed a desire for the Democrats to win in 2024. Cheney explained her perspective to me: “I think many of Joe Biden’s policies are dangerous. I think what’s happening at the border, for example, is  indefensible. But there’s a difference between bad policies, which are things from which the country can recover, and a direct assault on the foundations of the republic, which is something from which we can’t recover.” While she answered well, even at this point seemed to be consciously orienting the argument towards “signature lines.” Cheney seemed not to worry about the possibility that the Democrats too could pose a threat to the multiparty system and the individual rights of Americans. Indeed, she regularly focuses solely on Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, ignoring the Biden Administration’s social-media censorship, restriction of Second Amendment rights, and continued expansion of the administrative state. Unfortunately, and perhaps by design, I had no time to press the former Congresswoman further on her singular focus.     

My second question focused on Liz Cheney’s vision for a rebuilt Republican Party. I asked her how the Party could move away from Trump, given that candidates who support him continue to defeat anti-Trump Republicans in House, Senate, and state elections. Cheney acknowledged the problem, centering the issue as a problem of leadership. The Republican Party needs new leaders, she said. 

When considered along with her previous suggestions of presidential ambition, one need not reach too far to conclude that she means that the Republican Party needs to elect her as its new leader. How these “new leaders” will defeat Trump and his supporters, she does not say, except insofar as hopes that the general Republican electorate will stop believing Trump’s “lies.” 

In a follow-up question I asked regarding Republican voters’ continued support of Trump, she explicitly absolved them of responsibility, focusing again on the need to provide the party with new leadership to win back its vase. She went so far as to suggest the possibility of a new “conservative” or “constitutionalist” party to replace the Republican Party, perhaps a sign that Trump has taken over the Party, pushing it beyond the point of no return. However, Cheney had little real explanation for why Republican voters continue to support Trump if his actions are so obviously horrible. 

That same evening, Dartmouth hosted Liz Cheney as the keynote speaker at the “Democracy Summit.” The event was hosted by both the Dartmouth Political Union and the Rockefeller Center, and it cost a purported 110,000 dollars. Before Cheney spoke, two Dartmouth professors gave introductions, each lauding the former Congresswoman’s “principled courage” in standing up for democracy and, of course, Dartmouth for its commitment to facilitating dialogue. 

Cheney opened with a recounting of her experience on January 6. As the most senior Republican left on Capitol Hill during the attack, she faced “untold challenges.” Cheney recalled Annie Kuster, who sat in the audience, having said that Cheney’s father would be proud of her actions that day. (Odd for a Democrat to imply that the approval of Dick Cheney is something to be cherished.) Moving on from the day itself, Cheney emphasized the Republicans’ failure in responding to the events and to their instigator, Donald Trump. She extolled the supposed uniqueness of the American election system, in which the people, not men behind closed doors, choose the President. (The election of 2000, in which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bush and made her father the Vice President, must have slipped her mind.) Cheney attacked Trump for failing to allow this beautiful process to take its course and for failing to facilitate a peaceful transfer of power. More broadly, she attacked Republicans in Congress for creating a “culture of corruption,” allowing Trump to maintain control of the party. She continued on in this vein for several minutes, reprising points from our interview. She brought up again the argument that Trump is a more fundamental threat than Biden, saying that the witnesses testifying against Trump are his former allies. 

Once she was finished reciting these standard talking points, Cheney sat down to answer questions from student body president Jessica Chiriboga. The first question was whether Cheney believes Trump should be disqualified under the 14th Amendment from appearing on state ballots. Cheney answered in the affirmative, reasoning that Trump incited insurrection against the US. 

She went on to criticize elected Republicans like Kevin McCarthy for refusing to stand up to Trump and expressed disappointment in Mike Johnson for, in her opinion, sacrificing American democracy to achieve policy objectives. She had clearly seen these questions beforehand, as she gave answers which included lines that she had earlier quoted word-for-word from her book. Perhaps Cheney’s most interesting response was to an audience question about the state of America’s role as the protector of democracy. While clearly pre-written, it did deviate from the standard Trump-focused material that dominated most of the talk. Cheney stated rather plainly that America needs a leader who can use its armed forces to protect its interests and its principles, displaying a persistent neoconservatism that likely disturbed many in the left-leaning audience to whom she had otherwise been catering for most of the night. 

Indeed, more than any talk at Dartmouth in recent memory, Cheney’s address was rehearsed and curated. From the time-limited interview to the pre-prepared keynote address to the memorized answers to pre-approved questions, Cheney and her team evidently planned out the entire event to ensure that it went as smoothly as possible. In that effort, they largely succeeded. Cheney’s event received glowing reviews from much of campus. 

Further, her answers were for the most part reasonable, assuming that one agrees that Trump is in fact a singular threat to American democracy. However, even if one agrees that Trump did attempt to send a mob of uncoordinated, violent, and disorderly supporters to affect a coup against the federal government of the United States, Cheney’s complete willingness to overlook the actions of the Democratic Party is at least questionable. She is apparently more than able to pass Second Amendment restrictions, social-media censorship, and continued expansion of the state off as simply “bad policy.” 

Cheney seems far more willing to forgive Biden’s political overreaches than she is Trump’s. Moreover, Cheney made no mention of the Republicans running against Trump—obvious options for the anti-Trump constitutionalist that the former Congresswoman still claims to be. 

Her answer to the election disqualification question was particularly telling. Lambasting Trump for attempting to overturn the last election while supporting efforts to prevent him from running in the next does come off as inconsistent if one cares about the popular will and not just “the process.” Rather than let the American people decide whether or not Trump is fit to be US President, Cheney would leave that decision up to unelected judges. PerhapsCongresswoman Cheney’s hatred of Trump has by now consumed her. In seeking to defeat the “enemy of democracy” who tried to overturn an election, she would turn to extra-democratic means to prevent an election.