Goldstone’s most recent book is "On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African American Voting Rights.
In early 2020, if anyone was willing to bet that the conservative icon and anti-abortion, gun-toting zealot Liz Cheney, who sported an almost unbroken record of voting with Donald Trump and a history of calling Barack Obama “the most radical man who’s inhabited the Oval Office,” would be turned out of her own office by a former Never Trumper who had praised Cheney as a “proven, courageous, constitutional conservative,” they could have gotten very nice odds.
And lost.
Harriet Hageman succeeded in what only two years ago would have seemed laughable. But by making a single course correction — she, like many other Republicans including Rep. Elise Stefanik, changed from Trump hater to Trump groveler. Cheney, of course, sealed her doom by going in exactly the opposite direction, fueled by her determination to resurrect Republicans as an actual political party. Even more bizarre than her loss in the primary is that her approval rating among Democrats is now higher than among Republicans. While there has been no shortage of near insanity in the American political scene, Cheney’s whipsaw certainly ranks near the top.
Forsaken by her home state and the many voters who once revered her, Cheney must now decide how to continue her crusade to purge the party of Donald Trump and what, if anything, he stands for, an aim she announced bluntly in what passed for her concession speech. There has been widespread speculation that she will mount a run for the 2024 presidential nomination ... as a Republican. Although she is aware that she is facing a climb more arduous than Gannett Peak, the highest mountain in Wyoming, Cheney’s goal would likely be more to impact the process than to actually win the nomination.
Every American should root for her to run.
There has been a good deal of talk, hardly idle, about the United States abandoning even the pretext of democracy and descending into autocracy. Fortunately, although the pressure has been immense, autocracy has not yet taken root in the nation as a whole.
But in the Republican Party, it has.
Turning a blind eye to history, morality and the Constitution, Republicans have decided that to hold on to power for its own sake — they don’t seem to have a legislative agenda worth discussing — they will forgo even the veneer of truthfulness, honor and patriotism to embrace a man for whom democracy is a foolish affectation of the weak. If Christopher Marlowe were still around, he would cast Kevin McCarthy as Faust.
Although Republicans have yet to be successful in remaking the United States in Donald Trump’s image, they also seem loath to attempt to gain power by persuading a majority of Americans of the merit of their ideas. In the first place, they no longer have any ideas, and in the second, they are doing all they can to prevent the majority from expressing itself. The irony is that during the four months of the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787, the delegates feared despotism more than any other calamity that might befall the new nation and created a system that they thought would discourage it. Instead, by building minority rule into both the legislative and executive, and providing insufficient checks on the judiciary, they enabled it.
To be sure, a Republican takeover of the government is hardly assured. There have been signs that, despite Trump’s unquestioned influence in the primaries, many of those he has backed, such as Senate candidates Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, Herschel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona, and even J. D. Vance in ordinarily Republican Ohio, might face a difficult road in the general election. If all or most of them lose — a genuine possibility — Democrats will increase their control of the Senate to a Manchin- and Sinema-proof majority. Trump’s endorsement may also backfire in key gubernatorial races, such as those in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania. In House races as well, gerrymandered though they may be, Trump might turn out to be as much unwanted baggage as first-class ticket.
Still, without a plausible Republican alternative, even if Trump himself is rejected, Trumpism may well survive in the person of smarter, smoother, more acceptable amoral pretenders, such as Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor, while certainly conservative, doesn’t seem to have real core beliefs that guide him other than his own determination to inherit Trump’s gold toilets. Trump thus may turn out to have been a perverse Daniel Boone, blazing a trail for other, less obvious, would-be dictators to follow.
This is where Liz Cheney comes in. Whatever one may think of her policies and her beliefs, at least she has some. If she runs, while she may not get many votes, she will have a chance to share the stage during the debates that will sprout like mushrooms during the primary season. (Republican leaders are already considering how to keep her from participating in debates, but if she gets enough signatures to appear on the ballot, it will be difficult for them to win the inevitable court challenge.) Once on stage, she will forcefully air all the hypocrisies that the other candidates will desperately attempt to ignore.
All of this theater might not garner her all that much support — although perhaps there are a greater number of principled Republicans than many pollsters think — but exposing the duplicity and venal self-interest of the other candidates could well impact that share of the electorate that is still truly independent.
Another lesson Republicans have learned from Trump is that there is nothing worse than losing — not cheating, not lying, not stealing, not prostituting one’s values. If independents appear as if they will reject Republicans’ power grab and vote for Democrats, the prospect of defeat may nudge Republicans toward the center. Or, if they persist regardless, push them out the door.
Either way, the nation will be better off.
Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.