The Other Cheney

I saw, you know, Liz Cheney on the Larry King Show and, you know, she was a public official in the Bush Administration and, you know, she’s pretty good at remembering the daily talking points, but I’m wondering, you know, who cares what she thinks? At the end of the day, you know, who is she?

Has the Republican party really come to this? Sarah Palin, Rush Limbo, Mark Sanford, “Bobby” Jindal, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and, dare I say it, Jeb Bush?

I have to look up Liz Cheney’s education, I want to know what institutions she’s embarrassing, you know, by saying “you know” every four or five words. Her content is nothing to write home about either, merely running together an endless parade of boilerplate talking points. Her debating style is interruptionist in the extreme, she is just boiling to deliver the next point on her list, no matter who happens to have the mike at the moment. No one will remember what you said, because, you know, I was talking over you all the time.

Maybe I should be happy. My family, my friends, and all of my regular readers know full well that I feel about the Republican Party like other birds feel about crows; like Carpathian villagers feel about the vampire in the castle; like Jews feel about Hitler. But I’m not happy at all, in fact, to see them implode, because whether I like it or not we have a two party system, and it’s bad for that system if one party just flies off the rails and loses its ability to debate the issues honestly.

And let’s face it: this Liz Cheney style debate wrecking is not honest debate. It’s obscurantism, plain and simple, and it’s stupid and destructive.

That two party system. Feeling that America is a giant economy that needs careful tending is a legitimate point of view; feeling that America is a great culture made up of individuals and sub-groups that need careful tending is a legitimate point of view. Within the tension of a reasoned debate there is the possibility of compromise that nurses the whole thing forward, whatever it is. That’s where I stand. I’m no revolutionary, I don’t want to live through any Great Leaps Forward (although I wouldn’t mind a Second New Deal).

I’m just an everyday secular humanist shithead, Liberal definitely, progressive maybe, libertarian? not in this lifetime.

So . . . Liz who? Oh, yeah, soon-to-be-attempted-Senator Liz. What a nightmare.