Lawmakers in Congress talk a lot about bipartisanship, but few step forward to break with their party on difficult political matters.
And rarely do they do it for an extended period of time.
That’s why the Jan. 6 investigation in Congress is so unusual, as U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. take on their own party over the Capitol Attack.
As Vice-Chair of the Jan. 6 panel, Cheney has helped lead the committee in publicly presenting newly uncovered evidence, zeroing in on Donald Trump with an icy resolve.
“Liz Cheney has been a game-changer,” political analyst Stuart Rothenberg tweeted about the Wyoming Republican.
In a measured monotone — which reminds me of her father — Cheney this week revealed text messages sent by well-known Fox News talk show hosts as the attack on the Capitol was underway.
The texts pleaded with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to get Trump to speak out against the violence on Jan. 6.
“Ask people to leave the Capitol,” advised Sean Hannity.
“This is hurting all of us,” Laura Ingraham texted.
Cheney said the texts to Meadows made clear that Trump’s refusal to intervene demonstrated his true intentions on Jan. 6.
“There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States and his office and his oath to the Constitution,” Cheney said.
Hannity and Ingraham aren’t minor players in conservative media; and neither is Cheney — whose father remains a hated figure for many Democratic voters.
But now, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney may well be the most effective public voice Democrats have on the Capitol Attack.
Cheney has also continued to focus on the infamous Trump phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where Trump was desperately trying to overturn his loss in Georgia, throwing out all sorts of false charges of election fraud.
“President Trump asked the Secretary of State to ‘find 11,780 votes,’” Cheney noted.
Cheney hasn’t suddenly become a Democrat—she voted with Georgia Republicans against raising the nation’s debt limit, for example.
But Cheney’s persistence about Jan. 6 has made her a pariah within the GOP. House Republicans booted her out of a leadership post, and Trump is trying to engineer her primary defeat in Wyoming.
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome, constantly refers to Cheney as a traitor, denouncing the Capitol Attack investigation as a ‘witch hunt.’
“Democrats are using Communist tactics against their political enemies,” Greene said.
Do not ignore what Liz Cheney will be doing in the months ahead in the Jan. 6 probe. This is not something you see every day in the U.S. Congress.
Jamie Dupree has covered national politics and the Congress from Washington, D.C. since the Reagan administration. His column appears weekly in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. For more, check out his Capitol Hill newsletter at http://jamiedupree.substack.com
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