IT'S ONLY STALINISM IF YOU'RE A DEMOCRAT

The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey tells us that the Republican Party is in the process of declaring Liz Cheney an unperson.

Republican leaders forged an agreement this week to potentially fund a challenger to Rep. Liz Cheney in Wyoming, and party members are expected to formally condemn her for her work on the Jan. 6 committee Friday, an unprecedented rebuke of an incumbent member of Congress.

As the party met in Salt Lake City this week, the leaders of the Wyoming GOP privately signed a special letter that would allow the national party to financially support Harriet Hageman, Cheney’s primary challenger. The letter officially recognizes Hageman as the presumptive nominee for the seat....

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel also worked behind the scenes with David Bossie, a top Trump ally, to author and push a resolution that attacked Cheney’s work on the committee, called her a “destructive” force in the GOP and vowed the party would no longer support her.

“We’ve had two members engage in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse. This has gone beyond their original intent. They are not sticking up for hard-working Republicans,” McDaniel said in a joint interview with Bossie at a Salt Lake City hotel where the party is holding its winter meeting.

"Legitimate political discourse":

I'm so old I remember when merely running a serious challenger against a sitting officeholder was described as "Stalinist" and an "inquisition." That was in 2006, when anti-war Democrats defeated Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Senate primary. (Lieberman won the general election against the man who defeated him, Ned Lamont, running third party.) At the time, David Brooks wrote:

What's happening to Lieberman can only be described as a liberal inquisition. Whether you agree with him or not, he is transparently the most kind-hearted and well-intentioned of men. But over the past few years he has been subjected to a vituperation campaign that only experts in moral manias and mob psychology are really fit to explain.

Kathleen Parker wrote:

Their triumph in bringing down Lieberman may prove to be their undoing in November, as well as in the 2008 presidential election. Here's why: Americans may not like the war, or the deficit, or the Bush administration's immigration stance, or pick-your-grievance. We enjoy a surfeit of issues to divide us. But Americans also share a reflexive resistance to Stalinist tactics.

What else can one call the message now being telegraphed to Democratic leaders? You either stand with us against the war in Iraq, or we take you down.

Odd how we're not hearing those words now.

Josh Dawsey's Washington Post article misses a few facts. Dawsey describes one of the key Cheney antagonists, David Bossie, as "a committeeman from Maryland and a two-time campaign aide for Trump." But he's also the head of Citizens United. He's been a Democratic Party antagonist since the days of Bill Clinton. It was a Supreme Court case involving his organization that overturned limits on independent political expenditures for political campaigns.

Dawsey also lets Ronna McDaniel slide on this:

McDaniel said she was particularly upset when an elderly, recently widowed friend of hers was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee after it was reported the friend was an alternate elector at the campaign’s behest. She declined to name the friend.

Marcy Wheeler ID'd the "elderly, recently widowed friend" with a few Google searches:

This nice little old lady is probably Kathy Berden, one of the two people from Michigan who were subpoenaed. Dean Berden passed away last August.

... if it is Berden, she is someone whom Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has said obviously broke Michigan law.

It sure looks that way:

Michigan's Republican National Committeewoman Kathy Berden submitted the false electors certificate, according to this memo, including to a judge: https://t.co/6erYpZQQm5 pic.twitter.com/igfQ6LzOit

— Craig Mauger (@CraigDMauger) January 10, 2022

According to Ballotpedia, Berden is a long-time Republican hack, not an ordinary citizen:

Kathy Berden was elected to serve a four-year term as the national committeewoman of the Republican Party of Michigan in 2016. She has worked for the Republican Party at the local, state, and national level for many years.

Her Twitter:

I don't feel sorry for Liz Cheney. She'll land on her feet (probably as a CNN or MSNBC commentator -- it's very easy to imagine her as a Morning Joe regular). But her defenestration is much more like Stalinism than the (temporary) defeat of Joe Lieberman was.