The Enemy of My Enemy is at the Door

By BARRY FRIEDMAN

Democrats have a problem.

Many horrible people — certainly politically horrible people — keep agreeing with them about Donald Trump.

More than 200 Republicans, including members of Trump’s own administration: his former defense secretaries, James Mattis and Mark T. Esper; his longest-serving chief of staff, John F. Kelley; his former national security advisor, John Bolton; his former White House attorney, Ty Cobb; and, for good measure; his vice president, Mike Pence, all refuse to support him.

Among others in the GOP who refuse to hop aboard his despotic, dystopian train are former senators Mitt Romney, Jeff Flake, and Pat Toomey. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, he who during the George W. Bush administration approved “enhanced interrogation techniques” — you may know that as torture — said Trump is “Perhaps the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation.” 

How awful do you have to be to offend that guy?

The enemy (enemies) of our enemy are at the door.

Which brings us to the father and daughter of the mother of all Trumpian resistance — Liz and Dick Cheney.

First the daughter.

Before endorsing Vice President Harris, before being the vice-chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, which was brought to us courtesy of the 45th president, Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) voted with President Trump 90% of the time. When Trump’s Supreme Court gutted Roe v Wade, she praised its actions. She was then drummed out of the Republican Party for having the temerity to think first about the country, though. Her constituents in Wyoming refused to send her back to Washington.

On the 2024 election, she said, “Given the closeness of this election, particularly if you’re going to find yourself voting in a swing state, you’ve got to take the extra step if you really do recognize the threat that Donald Trump poses. Then it’s not enough to simply say, ‘I’m not going to vote for him.”

She was encouraging Republicans like those senators, like Vice President Mike Pence, like Larry Hogan, who was running for senator from Maryland, to not just not support Trump — as they had all promised to do — but to actually vote for Harris.

For his part, her father, the former vice president — he who still says the Iraq War “was the right thing to do” — who engaged in 476,679 other things that should require him to take a written exam before being allowed back into the human race, said, “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again. As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”

So what do you with all that? What do you do when you agree with Liz and Dick Cheney about anything, much less the direction of the country?

But if Donald Trump is (and he is) an existential threat to America —it’s the marker we laid down when he first rode down his escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 — does it even matter what either Cheney thinks about the environment, regulations, Supreme Court decision, taxes, immigration, or, for that matter, abortion, if they’re also fighting to keep Donald Trump out of the White House again?

No.

True, the Cheneys and many of those other 200 helped normalize a Republican Party that allowed a man such as Trump to grow and prosper.  It would be nice if they, and they alone, suffered the consequences of Trump, but we’re all in this together now.

If Trump wins, they lose.

We lose.

“But then he came for America and there was nobody left,” to paraphrase Niemoller.

If we’re lucky, the rancid Trumpian smoke that hovers over the Republican Party will soon dissipate — it has to, right? — and the Cheneys and those other Republicans, as well as columnists like George Will, Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, and David Frum, will undoubtedly rush back to their corner of the American ring to plot, defend, and articulate new pieces of horrendous, unconscionable legislation —  and, when the time comes, to support presidential candidates like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Glenn Youngkin, and Ron DeSantis.

Fine.

America will survive if Nikki Haley is elected president someday.

They’re all at the door, these Republicans.

Do we turn them away because of their past sins?

Tempting.

But no.

On Nov. 20, 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem and spoke to members of the Israeli Knesset. He acknowledged Israel’s right to exist, but also demanded that she withdraw from the territories it controlled after 1967 war and that the nation must allow Palestinians their right to self-determination, including a right to their own state. During the speech, a cabinet minister turned to then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and said,  “He’s not saying anything new. These have always been his demands. What’s different?” at which point Begin told him, “The difference is he’s saying them here, he’s saying them now.”

All those Republicans, including the Cheneys, are here now. They’re on the porch. Invite them in.

Barry Friedman is an essayist, political columnist, petroleum geology reporter — quit laughing — and comedian living in Tulsa, Okla. His latest book, “Jack Sh*t: Volume One: Voluptuous Bagels and other Concerns of Jack Friedman” is out and the follow-up, “Jack Sh*t, Volume 2: Wait For The Movie. It’s In Color” was released in June. In addition, he is the author of “Road Comic,” “Funny You Should Mention It,” “Four Days and a Year Later,” “The Joke Was On Me,” and a novel, “Jacob Fishman’s Marriages.” See barrysfriedman.com and friedmanoftheplains.com.

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2024

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