Comparisons of Senator Margaret Chase Smith and Representative Liz Cheney were almost immediate on cable tv news programs as the GOP voted to remove Cheney from her leadership post (May 11, 2021). The comparison for students of history is no surprise. Both women stood up to men who were lying to the American people for their political benefit. But the comparisons can go much further. Both men they are exposing as liars and traitors to the American people learned their devious blueprints from one person. Roy Cohn.
Roy Cohn was the chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) and mentored former President Donald J. Trump. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/19/roy-cohn-donald-trump-documentary-228144
In the words of the 1950s speech by Senator Smith, both men rode on the “Four Horsemen of Calumny-Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”
Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R. Maine) was the first woman to serve in both houses of the United States Congress. She served 24 years in the Senate starting in 1949. As a freshman senator, during the days when the protocol was that freshman senators did not say very much, she delivered a speech that she told Senator McCarthy he “will not like it.” https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/Speeches_Smith_Declaration.htm Without mentioning his name, she denounced Senator McCarthy in her “Declaration of Conscience” speech. (June 1, 1950).
Some of Senator Chase Smith’s speech will sound familiar to those who have heard the speeches of Representative Liz Cheney. “I speak as a Republican. I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator…
I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some real soul searching and to weigh our consciences as to the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America and the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges…
Today our country is being psychologically divided by the confusion and the suspicions that are bred in the United States Senate to spread like cancerous tentacles of “know nothing, suspect everything” attitudes…”
On May 11, 2021, Senator Liz Cheney stood before an empty chamber and said, “Attacks against our democratic process and the rule of law empower our adversaries and feed communist propaganda that American democracy is a failure,” she said. “We must speak the truth. Our election was not stolen, and America has not failed…Every one of us who has sworn an oath must act to prevent the unraveling of our democracy. This is not a policy. This is not partisanship. This is our duty as Americans. Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar.”
Like so many of our present day senators, the senators in 1950 remained silent, fearing to engage McCarthy. Smith was ridiculed by McCarthy and called “Snow White and the Six Dwarfs.” (She had six senators support her Declaration of Conscience.) He removed her as a member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. In 1954, she had the satisfaction of voting for McCarthy’s censure.
It will remain to be seen if Cheney has to wait four years to see if she can stop former President Donald Trump from entering the White House again.
Comparison of two brave women, Representative Liz Cheny, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, Voices of Reason