PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

John F. Kennedy wrote the book “Profiles in Courage” to tout political leaders of his day.

If he were alive today, he would devote a chapter to Liz Cheney, the U.S. Representative from Wyoming who would not lower herself to fawn over Donald Trump. 

So, her colleagues, aimless Republicans, voted yesterday to strip her of her leadership postion in the U.S. House.  They did so only by a voice vote in a private meeting with no opportunity for anyone to speak for Cheney.  And they performed this “cancel culture” ritual just moments after railing against “cancel culture” on the House floor.

This reminds me that one of my partners in the firm where I worked for almost 25 years often tried to convince me that the Republican Party, under Donald Trump, had gone way off the rails and would not soon recover, if ever.

I demurred, suggesting that Trump was an outlier and that, eventually, the party would return to its conservative roots honed under President Ronald Reagan and other similar national figures.

I was wrong.

Look only so far to what happened to Cheney.

She wouldn’t countenance Trump’s “big lie” that the election was stolen from him by President Joe Biden, so Cheney was tossed over the side.

Now, without her leadership position, she intends to lead the anti-Trump Republicans.  In her commitment to do so, she is showing noteworthy political courage in the face of the Trump scourge. 

“I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law,” she said on the House floor.

A couple commentators made these points on the day before Cheney lost her job.

FROM FORMER U.S. SENATOR JEFF FLAKE:  “It seems a good time to examine how we got to a place where such a large swath of the electorate (70 per cent of Republican voters, according to polling) became willing to reject a truth that is so self-evident.

“This allergy to self-evident truth didn’t happen all at once, of course. This frog has been boiling for some time now. The Trump period in American life has been a celebration of the unwise and the untrue. From the ugly tolerance of the pernicious falsehood about President Barack Obama’s place of birth to the bizarre and fanatical fable about the size of inauguration crowds, to the introduction of the term “alternative facts” into the American lexicon, the party’s steady embrace of dishonesty as a central premise has brought us to this low and dangerous place.

FROM WASHINGTON POST COLUMNIST MAX BOOT:  “Trump’s misconduct was of an entirely different order of magnitude. Far from responding to an attack on the United States, he facilitated one by welcoming Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“He fired FBI Director James B. Comey for not pledging personal loyalty and Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not squelching an investigation of Trump campaign ties with Russia.  He took numerous other actions that could have been charged as obstruction of justice if special counsel Robert S. Mueller III had been free to indict a sitting president.

“Trump declared war on his own government, maligning honorable civil servants as agents of a nonexistent “deep state.”  He demonized political opponents as “treasonous” and called the press “the enemy of the people,” borrowing a phrase from Joseph Stalin.  He lied at a record-setting pace (The Post Fact-Checker recorded 30,573 false or misleading statements over four years).  He tried to use military aid to blackmail Ukraine into helping him politically — and fired a U.S. ambassador to that country who was seen as an obstacle to his nefarious designs.

“Finally, and worst of all, Trump refused to accept the 2020 election and instigated a violent insurrection to stop Congress from certifying his opponent as the winner.”

Now, even as Trump is out of official power, national Republican “leaders” (if that’s what they are?) appear to be expressing fealty to the old president.  That is bad for the country, especially if Trump finds a way to rise again.

What’s needed is a Republican party that doesn’t bow at the altar of Trump – or perhaps even a third party that I will label “centrists.” They won’t have much chance to win national elections, but perhaps can exert just a bit of rational thought into public policy debates.

It is not an exaggeration to suggest that, if Trump wins, the future of American democracy will be at stake.  In New York magazine, writer Jonathan Chait put it this way:  “The fate of American democracy is the biggest issue in American politics.”

Liz Cheney knows that today more than ever.