Headline: The GOP’s Massive Missed Opportunity

Sub-headline: It’s called Trumpism Without Trump. But they can’t get there, and he won’t let them.

Here are the first three sentences, of the first paragraph of Andy Divine’s latest essay:

A long, long time ago, I can still remember when Liz Cheney and I were friendly, fellow young conservatives. Ah, the 1990s. It all came crashing down during the Iraq War when I just couldn’t get past her defense of her father’s decision to commit war crimes in the defense of civilization.

Here is a link to his mea culpa on the Iraq War:

I Was Wrong: A Real-Time Chronicle Of The Iraq War

Please note that each entry is time and date stamped. Yet there is no way to check where these comments were published, no footnotes appear, that would enable the reader to check for Andy’s veracity. He was educated at Oxford, and holds a PhD from Harvard. Surly he wrote a Thesis? These entries read like carefully manicured condensations of his essays. Again no means of verification!

Note the chapter headings : Trauma, Doubt, Regret. Political Melodrama is Andy’s métier.

Following the above quoted sentences:

…

I still disagree with her a lot, specifically on marriage equality, and I understand entirely why many on the left can’t get past her past, and why many in the Trump Party believe it’s sub-optimal to have a party leader at war with its one and only principle: sucking up to the deranged, unstable cult-figure who decisively lost the House, Senate and presidency last November. 

But she’s still right. Right that the last election was not rigged, right that it wasn’t even that close, right that a liberal democracy cannot survive if one party denies electoral integrity solely to protect the vanity of the loser, and more than right that a president who encourages violence to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is a threat to the Constitution itself. She’s right that if conservatism doesn’t mean defending the rule of law, the norms and procedures of liberal democracy, and reverence for our democratic institutions, it is nothing worthy of the name.

…

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-gops-massive-missed-opportunity?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo1MzQ5NjEsInBvc3RfaWQiOjM2MjYyNDg1LCJfIjoiTFlyeU8iLCJpYXQiOjE2MjExMTA4MTUsImV4cCI6MTYyMTExNDQxNSwiaXNzIjoicHViLTYxMzcxIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.BjjKQaahx7i-esPlWwT0T9MHSZJ7fTJS86My2qh6XOs

Liz Cheney is and remains a War Mongering Neo-Conservative, with no concern for The Rule of Law, nor the niceties of respectable bourgeoise politics. She is her fathers daughter. Liz and Andy are kindred spirits, defined by political opportunism, and exploiting moments offered by an everchanging political landscape.

Political Skeptic