Schmidt is a syndicated columnist and Editorial Board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Following her Republican primary defeat on Aug. 16, Rep. Liz Cheney referenced Lincoln’s words while introducing the establishment of her new leadership PAC, called The Great Task. This great task that Cheney is undertaking is enormous and it will require innovative political tactics.
I propose thinking of the Great Task as a triangle, whose mission is to save our democracy. The three angles are all important on their own, but would yield the greatest benefit if they all work together. The first angle is as Cheney has already laid out: keeping Donald Trump from ever becoming president again. The second is the reminder to all Americans of our shared values and the significance of the freedoms we cherish. The third, and probably the most difficult to accomplish (perhaps even impossible), is addressing the disease ailing the Republican Party.
As a part of her concession speech, Cheney told the crowd gathered in Jackson Hole: “We must be very clear-eyed about the threat we face and about what is required to defeat it. I have said since January 6, that I will do whatever it takes to make sure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office.” Cheney is not afraid to point out Trump’s ongoing efforts to dismantle our democratic system as well as his constant attacks on the foundations and institutions of our republic. Much of that work may come from Cheney’s role as vice chair of the Jan. 6 select committee.
Cheney remains committed to calling out the lies and conspiracies surrounding the 2020 election and has added that she plans to help defeat Republican election deniers during the upcoming midterms. Cheney understands that our elections are foundational to our freedoms and if we do not shutdown election deniers, the United States may never recover.
Cheney might have the most success with The Great Task by working from within the federal government. There is a way. But it is a long shot – a very long shot – on multiple fronts. If the Democrats manage to hold onto their majority in the House of Representatives in the midterms, they should nominate Cheney for speaker of the House. Not as a Democrat but as an independent. This action would be a bold signal that Democrats are more committed to saving our democracy than pushing through an agenda. Cheney has proven she can work as a bipartisan, good faith actor through her work on the Jan. 6 committee.
This unconventional plan would require an extraordinary amount of trust. Then again, our republic is facing an extraordinary crisis. The action would be the ultimate example of putting country over party. As a bonus, it might also help restore some level of trust in our institutions.
According to a recent NBC poll, registered voters in the United States say that the top issue on their minds is the threats facing our democracy. Twenty-one percent of voters ranked "threats to democracy" as the most critical matter facing the country, while 16 percent chose "cost of living." In third was "jobs and the economy," at 14 percent. The same poll also showed that 57 percent of voters believe that the investigations into Trump's alleged misconduct should continue.
The rise in democracy as a voting issue may be due to the televised Jan. 6 hearings. Perhaps they have primed the electorate and reminded us of what our republic stands for and how it works. Cheney seems to know how to use soaring rhetoric to keep this momentum going. Following her defeat, Cheney addressed the crowd with these words: “Let us resolve that we will stand together — Republicans, Democrats, and independents — against those who would destroy our republic. They are angry and they are determined, but they have not seen anything like the power of Americans united in defense of our Constitution and committed to the cause of freedom. There is no greater power on this earth. And with God's help, we will prevail.”
The ills that afflict the Republican Party run deep. There is no quick fix here — it will likely take multiple election cycles before we see a healthier GOP again. A GOP which is based on substance, principles and ideas, and not a cult of personality around one man. This will not be popular with Republican base voters or with Republican elected officials but is a necessary step in our two-party system. Cheney understands that one of the underlying causes of the disorder infecting the Republican Party is constant lies that voters are being fed. This illness, in my opinion, will be the most difficult part of the Great Task.
No matter how you define “great,” Cheney’s mission encompasses all of them. It may also be how we end up defining her.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.