WASHINGTON — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is disgusted with Democrats, who he accuses of being hypocritical sellouts, for embracing the Cheneys.
While a thorn in both party’s sides on an array of issues over the years, Paul used to align with the Democratic Party when it came to opposing waterboarding, secret detentions and other abuses of the George W. Bush administration. That’s why Paul’s accusing Vice President Kamala Harris and her party of hypocrisy for embracing former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and her father.
“It just shows just empty partisanship. These were the same people who agreed with me, the Cheneys were awful people, because they supported, you know, all the waterboarding and torture,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Raw Story as he was leaving the Capitol last month.
But the former pariahs of the Democratic Party now look to have a seat at their head table, which boggles Paul’s mind.
“On the loathsome Cheney's, they seem to have forgotten,” Paul said. “They were terrible.”
“Dick Cheney was…magna cum laude of destroyers of the Constitution.”
While campaigning in Wisconsin with Harris on Thursday, Liz Cheney encouraged voters to “reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump,” which is surprising language to hear from her.
That phrase struck many critics as odd, because just a few years ago, Democrats were the ones accusing the Cheneys of “depraved cruelty” for their family’s advocacy for torture. Which the family never backed away from and has never been shy about.
"It's very important that we recognize that folks that sort of stand up and say ‘well that was torture, and we shouldn't waterboard,’ number one, they're wrong,” Liz Cheney told me back in 2018. “Number two, they've got to be then willing to say, how many American lives are they willing to sacrifice because they don't want to waterboard terrorists?"
In the wake of the failed Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Cheneys have been embraced by many on the left for breaking with the Republican Party and opposing former President Donald Trump on the grounds that he’s a danger to the Constitution.
But Paul says the Cheneys are a danger to the nation’s founding principles of freedom.
When he was a younger, fresh-faced senator more than a decade ago, Paul turned heads in Washington for taking the Cheneys and torture head-on.
Slowly, the GOP moved away from the neocon ideology of the Dick Cheney wing of the party, which is why Paul says it’s been surreal seeing Democrats embrace all the self-righteous posturing coming from the Cheneys these days.
“You talk about worrying about someone destroying the Constitution, Dick Cheney was, you know, the magna cum laude of destroyers of the Constitution. Believes in no civil liberties, you know, and now they love him just because he hates Trump,” Paul said. “They have no principles themselves.”
Democrats beg to differ. They say the threat to the Constitution evolved, so they’re merely evolving along with it.
“The tent is so big Dick Cheney's in the tent these days”
On Thursday, in Ripon, Wisconsin — which claims to be the birthplace of the modern Republican Party — Harris hailed Liz Cheney as a “true patriot” to the cheering crowd.
“One of the most fundamental questions facing the American people in this election,” Harris told the crowd, is “who will abide by the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America?”
While most polls show the failed insurrection has faded from many voters’ minds, it remains ever-present to many congressional Democrats who were trapped in the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — let alone the Capitol Police officers who were brutalized that day.
After chairing the select Jan. 6 committee alongside Liz Cheney in 2022, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) grew to trust her and her commitment to the Constitution.
Thompson understands why Democrats lambasted the Cheneys and successfully ran against the GOP’s support of torture in the 2006 election, propelling Nancy Pelosi into her first historic stint as speaker of the House of Representatives.
But Thompson says politicians can’t be purists.
“Sometimes you agree with people, sometimes you don't,” Thompson told Raw Story at the Capitol in September. “Politics is based on issues rather than personalities.”
It seems the issue of the day for most Democrats — at least elected ones here in Washington — is protecting American democracy. To the party’s powerbrokers, that means stopping Trump at all costs, in part, by expanding their party’s tent this cycle.
“You know what? The tent is big,” Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) told Raw Story through a broad smile outside the Capitol a few weeks back. “The tent is so big Dick Cheney's in the tent these days.”
Craig and other Democrats continue doing all they can to try and woo nervous Republicans into joining them in this one cause: Defeating Trump.
“I told a group of right-leaning constituents last week at an event, I said, ‘voting for a Democrat or two does not make you a Democrat — it makes you an independent thinker,’” Craig said. “There's something happening out there.”
“We're in an upside-down world"
A few years back, no one could have predicted this — the Cheneys voting Democratic — coming. That’s why it’s still so hard for many political watchers to get their arms around this episode and other realignments underway in the 2024 election.
But this election cycle has been like no other, so no one’s really surprised.
“It's absolutely fascinating,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) told Raw Story at the Capitol a few weeks ago. “You juxtapose what's happening with the Democrats and the Cheneys with what's happening with Robert F. Kennedy and the Republicans, and we're in an upside-down world. We're in a very different place.”
