Let me begin by indicating that I’m not a big fan of Liz Cheney and would only vote for her for the presidency if her opponent was Donald Trump.
I truly believe that Donald Trump is devoid of a moral and ideological compass and has absolutely no regard for our democratic institutions or the Constitution. His desire for power has no bounds. He’s willing to exploit through racism and xenophobia the underlying anxiety that exists in our society and do whatever it takes to suppress non-white voting.
While Rep. Cheney is far too hawkish for me on foreign affairs and far too anti-government for me on domestic issues, I applaud her courageous rebuke of President Trump for his unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” through election fraud and for his role in inciting the January 6th Capitol riot.
Cheney’s replacement as chair of the House Republican Conference, Rep. Elsie Stefanik of New York, is more moderate than Cheney. The reason she was selected to replace Cheney is not because of her views on policy issues, but rather because Stefanik has been a fiercely unwavering defender of President Trump including agreeing with his claims about widespread election fraud and cheating.
In spite of recent polls indicating that the former president’s popularity is waning somewhat, his cult-like following among his core supporters has not diminished. Trump’s zealots have adopted a take-no-prisoner approach when it comes to dealing with centrist Republicans whom they view as traitors for having the audacity to criticize the former president.
“In states across the country, local Republican officials are working against leaders whom they see as disloyal to the former president. The Arizona Republican Party even censured Cindy McCain, the widow of the state’s six-term senator. The result is that the party leadership sees no popular incentive to move toward the center, even as the warning signs of decline accumulate,” wrote Jelani Cobb in a recent article in The New Yorker entitled “How Parties Die: Will the G.O.P. go the Way of the Whig?”
In Wyoming, where the Cheney name has been a guarantee of electoral victory for decades, there are four announced Republicans willing to pledge allegiance to the former president and take on Cheney in the next primary.
The manner in which the Republicans ousted Liz Cheney from her leadership post was reminiscent of the tactics employed by the despicable former Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy. Like McCarthy, Republicans disregarded the facts and bought the “big lie,” — in McCarthy’s case his claims that the State Department was being “infested with communists” and in Trump’s case his fraudulent claims that he won the election.
There are many similarities between the tactics that McCarthy employed and those promulgated by those who perpetuate “the cult of Trump” out of fear.
While giving speeches, Joe McCarthy would wave a piece of paper that he contended had a list of names of communists working at the State Department. In fact, there was no such list and he didn’t have a single name. It was simply a gimmick designed to garner headlines, which was all he cared about. For four and half years he made outrageous charges, without any evidence to back it up. He would “surf the aftershock.”
Former President Trump recognized early on in his career that dominating the airways and headlines is an extremely important element of one’s power. He said, “Good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.”
McCarthy’s career was aided immensely by the support he received from the Hearst papers and the support of nationally syndicated columnists Westbrook Pegler and Walter Winchell, who reached millions of readers at a time when very few households had televisions. Likewise, Donald Trump would not be where he is today were it not for FOX News, which was created by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and nurtured by its founding CEO, former Republican media consultant Roger Ailes.
During the Trump presidency, FOX served as the “mouthpiece” of the Trump administration. Its leading on-air personalities, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, served as fans, apologists and defenders of his brand of authoritarian populism. Likewise, national conservative talk radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage were outspoken proponents of everything Trump.
According to the pollster George Gallup, Joe McCarthy could do no wrong according to his strongest supporters. In 1954 Gallop wrote, “Even if it were known that McCarthy had killed five innocent children, they would probably still go along with him.” How reminiscent is this of a statement made by candidate Trump in Sioux Center, Iowa in 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any votes, OK? It’s, like, incredible.” This statement, that he feels he could commit a capital offense and continue to retain the loyalty of his supporters, is indicative of the arrogance of Donald Trump.
Lastly, both Joe McCarthy and Donald Trump had no hesitations whatsoever about lying, telling half-truths, distorting facts, and if they didn’t have any facts to embellish, making them up. They were two very scary, unscrupulous demagogues.
In the end, Joe McCarthy was “condemned” by a 67-22 vote in the Senate. However, his fellow senators did something to him that was very telling. He was shunned. When he would rise to speak on the floor, senators from both sides of the aisle would leave the floor. Further, when he would approach groups in the cloakroom, they would disband. The contrast between the shunning of Joe McCarthy and kowtowing of Republicans to former President Trump is emblematic of the sad state of the Party of Lincoln.
Irwin Stoolmacher is president of the Stoolmacher Consulting Group, a fundraising and strategic planning firm that works with nonprofit agencies that serve the truly needy among us.
