It’s strange, the way things have changed in twenty years.
I have a lot of fond memories of the 2004 presidential campaign. I’d graduated from college a few years earlier and had only really been politically active a couple of years. It may be a cliché to say this, but 9/11 made me see the world very differently. I saw the leadership of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney as having been crucial to our nation holding together in the wake of the terrorist attacks. I only casually followed the 2000 presidential election, but the 2004 campaign I was all in for. I knew clearly what was on the line in that election. I not only donated money to the Bush-Cheney campaign, but I started a blog dedicated to helping their reelection. On Election Day, I traveled to New Hampshire to help get out of the vote, because such efforts would have been wasted in my home state of Massachusetts.
The Bush-Cheney ticket didn’t win New Hampshire that year, but they won the election. Their second term was rockier than their first, but I supported them throughout and ever since.
I’ve spoken about my disappointment with George W. Bush in the past. While I generally gave him a pass for his criticisms of Donald Trump, because Trump humiliated Bush’s brother Jeb in the 2016 primaries, I was beyond disappointed when he failed to criticize Biden for his botched withdrawal of Afghanistan. Bush had every reason to have condemned Biden’s incompetence. Bush’s silence was particularly baffling because he’d been so critical of Trump but couldn’t bring himself to admit publicly that Biden had squandered twenty years of blood and treasure in Afghanistan. Later, Bush even made a veiled comparison between the 9/11 attacks and the January 6 Capitol riot.
That was heartbreaking enough, but even Dick Cheney, who has generally remained out of the spotlight since leaving the White House, has gravely disappointed me.
Related: George W. Bush Continues to Disappoint Me
I probably shouldn’t be so shocked, since Cheney’s daughter, Liz Cheney, is one of the two anti-Trump Republicans on the J6 Committee, and Trump essentially doomed her political career. But as much as I understand family loyalty, Dick Cheney, like George W. Bush before him, has allowed himself to become a stooge of the political left that hated them both with such venom not so long ago.
Not only did the former vice president agree to be a stooge of the left by participating in a “moment of silence” to commemorate the anniversary of the riot in the House chamber on Thursday, but also by slamming the Republican Party leadership over the Capitol riot.
“It’s not leadership that resembles any of the folks I knew when I was here for ten years,” Cheney reportedly said, according to CNN’s Ali Zaslav.
“I’m deeply disappointed we don’t have better leadership in the Republican party to restore the Constitution,” Cheney is also reported to have said, according to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl. Cheney also told him that Jan. 6, 2021, was “an important historical event” and that “you can’t overestimate how important it is.”
Virtually every narrative the left (and Dick Cheney’s daughter) have been pushing about the Capitol riot has been wrong. It wasn’t an insurrection, and Trump had nothing to do with it. Liz Cheney even admitted the real purpose of the J6 committee is to keep Trump from running for president again.
I understand that Dick Cheney has personal issues with Trump, especially after how Trump attacked his daughter, but I never thought I’d see Dick Cheney allow himself to be used as a tool of the radical left this way.
I don’t regret my support of Bush and Cheney in 2004; they were the leaders we needed at the time. But they are both almost unrecognizable now.
