Syndicated columnist Marc Munroe Dion: Flip, flop or fail : The bottom line on Liz Cheney
About 20 years ago, I was covering the governing body of a local suburb.
One cool evening in early fall, when the wind was sighing softly in the trees outside town hall, the five members of that board voted 4-1 in favor of establishing a needle exchange facility in town.
In describing the town, I probably don't need to say anything more than that there is a series of classical music concerts on the lawn of the Methodist church in the summer and a Japanese guy rolling fresh sushi in the local grocery store.
Leaving the meeting, stuffing my notebook in the back pocket of my khakis, I was asked what I thought of the new needle exchange center by a doctor who'd spoken on behalf of the facility.
"It's not gonna get built," I said. "People will force them to rescind that vote, and if they won't rescind, the voters will recall everyone on that board."
For someone who very frequently has to give people bad news, the doctor took my news very poorly.
Recall petitions started circulating in town two days after the vote, and at the next weekly meeting, the vote was rescinded by a vote of 4-1. The one person who voted not to rescind the vote lost her next bid for reelection.
The board had "flip-flopped," as we say in America, but no one minded because they'd flip-flopped to respect the will of their constituents and to save their $1,500-a-year stipend jobs.
Americans say we don't like flip-floppers. What we like, we think, is someone who can adopt an opinion and hang on to it until they die. This, we believe, shows strength of character. This is the attitude of people who live in a country where about half of us don't stay with our first husband or wife.
Personally, I'm very happy that I don't hold all of the opinions I held when I was 20. I was dumb as a stump until I was 30, and worse yet, I was too dumb to know I was dumb.
Should America not have flip-flopped on segregation or votes for women? Should President Donald Trump have held fast to his original belief that only mobsters take the Fifth Amendment? Should President Bill Clinton not have flip-flopped on the wedding vows? Should the institution known as the Supreme Court not have flip-flopped on Roe v. Wade? Should the patriotic simpletons who broke into the U.S. Capitol have held fast to their original belief in law and order?
If you believe (and we used to) in the steady evolution of human beings toward knowledge and justice, then you have to believe that opinions evolve, stances change, and new ideas eventually emerge and convince us that we shouldn't burn witches or lynch Black men for looking too long at a white woman.
But there are gay people on all the television shows now, and your niece just got pregnant by a Black guy, and you yearn for certainty, and more importantly, you yearn for the certainty of the 1950s. Even if you weren't alive in the 1950s.
Rep. Liz Cheney, who just got slaughtered in a primary election in Wyoming, would not flip-flop. She did exactly what brave, principled Americans are supposed to do. She held her ground, and she wouldn't trim her opinions.
And she knew she'd lose the election because the people of Wyoming, like most of the rest of us, are uncomfortable with the principled stand because we are embarrassed by principled people.
Trump has a political career because he found a group of voters with whom he could agree. Cheney wouldn't flip-flop, and she walked into the cannon's mouth. Cheney is what we claim to admire and secretly hate.
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