Glenn smears Liz for smearing Russia
Glenn Greenwald, amoozin’ yet confoosin’ as ever, launches a furious attack on the recently defenestrated Liz Cheney, claiming that Cheney lied about her perpetration of the “Russians paid for dead Americans in Afghanistan” hustle cooked up by the CIA and used by Cheney and other various assorted warmongers to scuttle Donald Trump’s plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. Liz says she only said that the stories were “terrible if true”. Glenn, in response, claims that he’s dug up irrefutable evidence that she dropped the conditional “if then” mode and went for the flat affirmative. The thing is, all the “evidence” Glenn provides shows Liz using another trick: “reports”. See, I didn’t say it happened. I say we have reports that it happened.”
There’s no doubt that Liz’s rhetoric on the topic was the standard sleazy, cheesy warmonger hype, including such lazy tropes as “It has been clear for some time that Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan.” Which “proves” that they put bounties on our troops’ heads? Well, I didn’t say that, did I? Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, and Liz is above all else the daughter of hypocrisy. But the case against her has been made far more effectively by others.1
Glenn goes after Liz for this extended beatdown largely, I think, because of his compulsive hatred of “the center” and his fear that the neocons will somehow leverage Cheney’s defiance of the Trump cult to engineer a return to the bad old days of bipartisan interventionism that typified the Bush-Obama years. But, surprisingly enough, politicians do respond to “felt reality”. George Dub-Ya rejected Dick Cheney’s dreams of a bombing offensive against Iran, and Barack Obama, on the cusp of intervening in Syria, suddenly decided he needed Congress’s approval to do so, knowing he wouldn’t get it. I agree with both Glenn and the more level-headed Daniel Larison that President Biden has been marinating in Washington, DC groupthink for decades and is showing little evidence that he wants to come up for air any time soon. But that’s an entirely different issue than whether Liz deserves credit for saying out loud—and loudly—what other Republicans are supposedly whispering about: the overwhelming corruption that Trump is working on what used to be called the Republican Party.
A recent column by WashPost anti-Trump neocon Jennifer Rubin, whom Glenn almost surely continues to detest, Liz Cheney doesn’t go far enough, points out most if not all of Liz’s limitations, at least on the topic of the Republican Party’s ailments. Liz wants to pretend that Trump is a grotesque cancer growing on the Republican Party. As Jennie points out, the cancer has spread, a lot. One can, I guess, praise Liz for her “optimism” that all “true” Republicans agree with her. The problem is, that’s so not true.
On the other hand, a pair of stories in Politico indicate that turbocharged Trumpism is causing some indigestion at the state level: Arizona audit divides wobbling state GOP and Stolen election myth rattles key GOP race.2 Apparently, operationalizing Trump’s lies is a little more difficult than simply shouting vociferously whenever they’re repeated. It’s the “moderate Trumpers”—“we’ll build on his heritage”—that Liz is perhaps trying to reach. Well, good luck with that. I think 90% of the Republicans who are “with Liz in spirit” plan to sit on their butts and wait for Trump to die. It’s worked so well up until now, hasn’t it?
Elise Stefanik, the Whore who went to Harvard.3
Okay, so my summary of John McCormack’s understated account of Elise Stefanik’s career over at the National Review, The Evolution of Elise Stefanik, may strike some as excessively pungent. For my money, Eli’s earned it. McCormack describes Eli as your standard Cambridge overachiever, wowing everyone who encounters her, and then closes in for the kill:
The overwhelming majority of Senate Republicans — including Rubio, Graham, and Tom Cotton — rebuffed efforts to reject the certification of the Electoral College. But Stefanik went all-in on Trump’s post-election claims. On January 6, she joined a majority of House Republicans in rejecting certification of the Electoral College results.
“Today, I will respectfully object to contested electors from the states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin,” Stefanik said in a statement issued that morning.
Like Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, Stefanik pointed to the doubts on the part of some Americans about the election’s legitimacy as a reason to reject certification of the results. But then she went a step further to assert as fact that widespread voter fraud had actually occurred.
In a written statement, Stefanik said that in Georgia “more than 140,000 votes came from underage, deceased, and otherwise unauthorized voters — in Fulton County alone.”
If Stefanik’s statement were correct, that would mean that more than 25 percent of all ballots cast in Fulton County, home to Atlanta, were illegitimate. Last week, the Georgia secretary of state’s office called Stefanik’s claim “ludicrous.”
When McCormack questioned her about the Fulton County claim, Stefanik first said that she “stood by” her comments on the House floor, when she did not make the Fulton County claim, but when McCormack questioned her further she said “The basis for that is that was filed in a court case” and then, surprise, surprise, waxed evasive when he continued to press her:
Does she still think 140,000 votes in Georgia were illegitimate? “I think there are questions that are important for the American people to hear answers to,” Stefanik replied.
But again, Stefanik did not present the wild claim of widespread voter fraud in Georgia as a question in January — she asserted it as a fact, and gave it as a reason that she opposed certification of Georgia’s electoral votes. Now she says she both “stand[s] by” her January statement while suggesting she’s just asking questions.
Dunno if she’s reached Liz Cheney levels of hypocrisy yet, but, clearly, she’s workin’ on it.
1. Still, kudos of a sort to Glenn for getting through an entire column without mentioning how much he hates Rachel Maddow.
2. In an update to the latter story, the turbocharged Trumpist went down to defeat.
3. Ni prima, ni ultima, as Leporello might say.
Alternative “happenings”