Liz Cheney just lost her seat in the House of Representatives in a primary challenge to Harriet Hageman by a wide margin. It was an ignoble defeat for a woman who had easily won reelection in 2020. What changed, of course, is her support of former President Donald Trump. After the January 6th riot at the capitol, Cheney became one of Trump biggest critics, from joining with only 9 other Republicans in the House to vote to impeach him, and disparaging him in the media, to having a prominent voice in the January 6th investigation in the House, Cheney has never missed a chance to criticize the former president.
Lost in all the criticism is the fact that Cheney loudly endorsed Trump in both 2016 and 2020, voted with him over 90% of the time, and reportedly in 2019 even publicly asserted that she was more "Trumpier" than Senate Republican Rand Paul. So what happened? What turned a Trump loyalist into a critic? Even if Cheney did not believe that Trump actually won, she could have easily lied about it on the campaign trail, shrugged off the January 6th riot like so many Republicans have, and cruised to a reecletion victory. But she chose not to, knowing full well that she was turning against the beliefs of the vast majority of Republican voters. I think the answer as to why she did it lies in her seeing a certain event that triggered her sense of empathy.
You see, as anyone who's ever argued with someone with opposite political beliefs can tell you, progressives and conservatives experience the world very differently. Studies have shown that progressives and conservatives brains respond to various stimuli differently, with conservatives responding more to fear, anger and disgust (which explains right wing media!). Conservatives also have a harder time expressing empathy for anyone not within their own social circle.
What does this have to do with Cheney turning against Trump? I think the exact moment that changed her mind was seeing then Vice President Mike Pence being rushed out of his Capitol office by security as Trump supporters chanted for his death. And the reason that moment struck so hard for her was because her own father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, once worked in that very office, and it was easy for her to understand the horror that Pence was being subjected to. It hit home for her because she could imagine her own father in that situation.
So that was the breaking point in her 4 year support of Trump, it affected her in a way that it didn't to other conservatives, who, unlike her, could condemn the January 6th riot without voting to impeach Trump and then eventually downplay the riot entirely. Interestingly, her father is also an example of conservative empathy: during the 2004 presidential campaign, when then President George W Bush ran on a platform of adding an anti gay marriage amendment to the constitution, Dick Cheney disagreed and said he supported gay marriage. He did this because his other daughter, Mary, was a lesbian. Once again, having a family member affected by something caused him to go against his own party's political beliefs.
Liz Cheney is now said to be considering running for president in 2024, and while I would certainly prefer her to Trump and admire her for standing up to him, I certainly couldn't vote for someone who supported Trump while he was making bigoted statements and separating families at the border. Just because one dramatic image changed her view about Trump doesn't make her a progressive hero.
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