Morning Thanks

Garrison Keillor once said we'd all be better off if we all started the day by giving thanks for just one thing. I'll try.

Monday, September 27, 2021

"I was wrong"--amazing

What can you say?--not often will a politician with significant standing, not to mention national prominence, repeat those three words, as Liz Cheney did yesterday: "I was wrong. I was wrong. . . .I was wrong."

Shocking. Amazing.

It could be, however, that her political career was already steaming toward disaster, as one of only two Republicans in the legislature siding against The Donald, who continues to proclaim "the big lie," that somehow thousands of poll workers got together to make sure that Joe Biden won the 2020 Presidential election and not his Eminence.  Liz doesn't like him. 

And, shockingly, she is not afraid to say it.

She's one of only two Republicans who joined the Select Committee investigating the January 6th madness. On Trump's enemies list, the name "Liz Cheney" may well be the only one written in with a branding iron. No love lost between them really because there never was any to speak of.

So what she said yesterday on 60 Minutes may well have negligible value politically, one way or the other. Taking the positions she has on the ex-President long ago sealed her fate--for good or ill. If she wins or loses her next campaign remains to be seen.

The issue is personal, she said, immensely personal, and her response--"I was wrong"--has to do with the issues around accepting the LBGTQ community. Rep. Cheney has a sister, Mary, who is a lesbian. Furthermore, her sister has a spouse who has a name too--Heather Poe. Mary and Heather are married. They've been together for 21 years, and there are children, a family, a little boy and a little girl.

So when Lesley Stahl asked Liz Cheney about her previous answers to questions about gay marriage (she was always against it) Stahl herself was clearly shocked when Representative Cheney said, three times, "I was wrong."

I suppose that'll be it with Wyoming's evangelical vote. Among evangelicals (whatever exactly they may be these days), maybe the most venomous of sins is gay marriage. Yesterday, very publicly, Liz Cheney, who voted for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, notified Lesley Stahl and the nation that she had changed her mind--as impossible as that may be among pols. "I was wrong," she said, three times. 

Until the issues touch you personally, it's not all that difficult for evangelical-types to fortify their anti- positions with a blunderbuss loaded with scripture versus. But when your son or your granddaughter or the sweet kid next door announces his or her sexuality, defining righteousness gets sticky.

Good for Liz Cheney, I say. Honesty is a rare commodity these days, even biblical, as I remember. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i don't know why this is an issue any more, and why pick on Wy?