Women's work

Perhaps not in history yet to be written, but certainly in this moment, it's the women who are deep-sixing the Donald. Not women I can identify with. Too many thought they could get something by going along with this misogynist, patriarchal boor -- until they couldn't stomach his selfishness and moral cowardice any longer. 

If they are like most women, they had long been willing to give guys they like a little slack about some patriarchal habits -- we live in a society which doesn't make it easy for even good men to be good.

One might have thought Donald Trump exceeded the allowance women make for men a long time ago, but these women determined to follow their own agendas -- until Trump violated not only their own dignity, but the patriotic Constitutionalism in which they found a different loyalty.

Exhibit A is Liz Cheney. That's challenging for anyone who has been paying attention. Her wily political operator dad Dick was the central figure in making the United States a country that tortures its perceived enemies. If that's not a betrayal of any positive vision for this country, I don't know what is.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, Liz Cheney was willing to diss her own sister's lesbian family to stay in tune with the homophobic Republican voters who elect her. Only a year ago, she loudly recanted her past position on NPR:

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., expressed regret over her earlier opposition to same-sex marriage, a position she took eight years ago that led to a public falling out with her sister, Mary, who is gay and married with children. 

"I was wrong. I was wrong. I love my sister very much. I love her family very much," the lawmaker said in an interview on CBS' 60 Minutes.

I have to wonder: did that moral realization perhaps prepare Cheney to recognize that in the case of the Donald, the only way forward was to do the thing she knows is right. And that she has a lot of women with her.

Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman report:

In the course of exposing Mr. Trump’s elaborate effort to overturn the 2020 election, the House committee has relied on the accounts of several women who came forward to publicly tell their stories. Their statements, and the attacks that ensued, laid bare how women often still pay a higher price than men for speaking up. ...

 The result has been that as the committee unfurls the story of the Jan. 6 attack — playing footage of a mostly male crowd laying waste to the Capitol in Mr. Trump’s name, with the president looking on supportively from the West Wing — many of the witnesses who have emerged most prominently have been women, with Ms. Cheney as their defender. ... Yet while male witnesses have received some criticism from the right — in Mr. Cipollone’s case, Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted that he should “grow a spine & go on record” — the attacks have not been at the same volume or intensity, or of the same degree of personal nastiness, as those against Ms. Hutchinson in particular.

Laura Miller comments with insight at Slate:

Cheney isn’t mad. She’s disappointed. Her demeanor is exactly that of a mom who has been called out of her office in the middle of a work day because her teenage kid is in the principal’s office for pulling some idiotic, illegal, and dangerous prank. She knows that he knows exactly how badly he’s fucked up, that the consequences will be serious and they are inevitable. She will entertain no excuses or evasions or any other form of trifling objection. She mostly wants him to acknowledge what he’s have done, and promise not to do it again. 

But you can only be disappointed in someone who’s capable of better behavior, and that gives Cheney’s reproaches a sting that’s been missing in the often much louder denunciations from Democrats who routinely dismiss Republicans as hopeless deplorables.

I'll give a last word on Cheney (for now) to Marcy Wheeler, never someone who is conned by the ethical shenanigans of opportunists and politicians:

... minutes after saluting the bravery of women like Cassidy Hutchinson, Cheney pivoted to the historical moment of women’s suffrage. 

"In this room, in 1918, the committee on women’s suffrage convened, to discuss and debate whether women should be granted the right to vote. This room is full of history and we on this committee know we have a solemn obligation not to idly squander what so many Americans have fought and died for. ..." 

... as Cheney attempts to convince Republicans that Donald Trump made them betray their patriotism, she is pitching the alternative in distinctly female form. 

Just before she goes home to lose her primary, badly, this woman is committing to coming back in September to continue the work of trying to persuade her fellow conservatives to believe in the truth again.

If I were a Wyoming voter with my convictions, would I switch parties briefly to vote for Liz? Not sure I would. A Cheney is a Cheney. But if I were a person who lived in Wyoming, I might be a Democrat who would make the temporary switch.