The Ballad of Bennie and Liz
An Unlikely Dynamic Duo
Issue #70: OpEd Monday, June 20, 2022
There is plenty to be said about the January 6 hearings, and there will be plenty to be said for years to come; about how historic these hearings are, and about the shocking testimony coming from Republicans, even Trump Republicans who served with the Great and Powerful In His Own Mind, attached to the stench of his hide as sycophantic suckerfish for as long as they could stand it until even they could no longer tolerate the taste.
But if there is one thing that stands out to me more than anything else about these hearings (and my wife and I both, as sworn political junkies, have watched every single minute from gavel to gavel), it has been the calmly respectful, collegial collaboration between Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi), and Co-Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) as they work together to forever destroy and erase the mythology of Donald Trump, stripping away his Fox and Fiends manufactured holy image of Our Father Who Ought To Be In The White House to replace it with a three-dimensional rendering of the outhouse where he truly belongs.
Because understand this: Bennie and Liz have absolutely nothing in common except for their membership in the human race, their American citizenship, and their shared loathing of Donald Trump. I have never heard either actually say that they hate the man, but I kinda think they do. And that loathing/hatred of a man who deserves every single ounce of it and more has brought together the most unlikely odd couple of colleagues; a Black man raised in rural Mississippi in a town with slightly more than 500 residents (you can’t get much Blacker than that), and a white woman from Wyoming, one of the whitest and most Republican states in the Union, who is the daughter of Big Dick Cheney.
For those who don’t know or don’t remember, Big Dick was the admittedly fearsome rightwing power behind the throne of George W. Bush throughout his term as Veep. Big Dick did his slimy best to derail and tarnish the Obama administration for more than a year after Bush, his former boss, had graciously submitted to the traditional orderly transition of power and had pretty much distanced himself from Big Dick as he moved on with his life.
And also understand this: Liz Cheney voted with Trump more than 92.9 percent of the time while he was in office, and voted for his re-election in 2020. She didn’t become a Representative until 2017 when she was elected for an at-large seat, but I think it’s safe to say she most likely voted for him in 2016 as well. Because if you can tolerate all the shit he did for those four years he was in office and still vote for the man’s re-election? Yeah, well.
OK, she did say voting for Trump’s re-election was done for policy reasons because she thought Trump’s policies were “good for the country.” But that doesn’t exactly make it go down any easier – except that she did later publicly say she regretted that vote and she also voted to impeach Trump.
My head, it hurts…
And so there she sits, to the left of Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson. Liz is one of just two Republicans on the committee, and the one who may have torched her entire political career for doing so.
The other Republican on the Committee, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), announced that he received a mail threat to his house, calling for the “execution” of him, his wife, and his 5-month-old child. Gotta love those Trump Republicans…
Having common sense, a sense of decency, and intelligence really shouldn’t be all it takes to be heroic. Reaching across the aisle to join forces with someone from the opposite side to shine the light on a madman whose sole desire is to destroy the country shouldn’t be heroic either.
It should be what any sane person would do in a time of crisis. But this is a time of crisis, and sane elected officials from a particular party are extraordinarily hard to find.
And so we have Benny and Liz, heroes simply for not being afraid to be sane in public – or of being seen together in public in a country where not so long ago one of them would have become strange fruit for daring to agree to such a partnership.
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