The Last Temptation of Elise Stefanik

Dennis Sanders

Dennis is the pastor of a small Protestant congregation outside St. Paul, MN and also a part-time communications consultant. A native of Michigan, you can check out his writings over on Medium and subscribe to his Substack newsletter on religion and politics called Polite Company.  Dennis lives in Minneapolis with his husband Daniel.

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32 Responses

  1. Unless we know of temptations she resisted, I’d be inclined to call this “The First Temptation (etc.)” And there’s no reason to assume this is the last, when she’s only 36.Report

  2. Chip Daniels says:

    The great tragedies are when someone is tempted to do a “little evil for a greater good”.

    Like we can easily understand the yearning for some great noble cause, which only requires a little sacrifice here, or some corner cutting there, until one is completely mired in corruption and lost in a maze of moral confusion.

    What is less understandable, and not even much of a tragedy, is to lose one’s soul in pursuit of something that is obviously evil to begin with.Report

  3. Michael Cain says:

    As an old adage goes, “Everyone has a price.” US Representative is a better gig than most of us can ever expect to land. Influence, prestige, remuneration, benefits both short- and long-term, historically easy to keep. Now, suddenly, supporting Donald Trump appears to be a necessary requirement for a Republican to keep that gig. Certainly opposing Trump is dangerous to keeping it. This morning, Liz Cheney lost her leadership post. In 2022 she’s likely to lose a primary and her seat, and there’s a high probability her political career is over.

    I’m quite sure I’ve got a price, and I’m happy that no one has ever really pushed me to have to decide how much.Report

  4. Saul Degraw says:

    She did not turn out anti-Trump over and over. She voted for Trump supported bills 78 percent of the time. I admit this is a lower percentage than Liz Cheney.

    However, her biography is probably perfetctly petit-bourgeois reactionary. Maybe she was the first in her family to attend college but she still went to a relatively expensive private school. According to wiki, her parents owned a wholesale plywood distributor and I believe the only job she had besides political office was working for her parents. This is the kind of high-income but low education voter that made the bulk of the Trumpist base. Forever hating those libs and their secular-city ways.

    She is a good candidate to lose her seat to redistricting though. This is what I meant from the other thread when the Republicans were transforming into a party for fascism and apartheid. They are starting to see any Democratic victory as wrong and illegitimate and think anything must happen to stop it.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      I know I shouln’t be surprised but it is really weird encountering 80s kids that turned out really differnetly than yourself in politics and other cosmological matters.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to LeeEsq says:

        Which is why I think people should stop with the whole “old white men who are dying off” stuff.

        Fascism and reaction has always had a ready made appeal for people of all ages. People young enough to be my kids are running around talking like George Wallace and Phyllis Schlafly.Report

        • LeeEsq in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          The Left always thought that the current generation of young people would come about and bring on the Revolution forever. People thought this about the early boomers, basically anybody who was draftable by the late Vietnam War, and they went on and got Reagan, Bush, and Trump elected into office.Report

  5. Oscar Gordon says:

    This is a danger of career politicians, in that past a certain point, there is only one employer, and if you don’t like the workplace, or get fired, there is no lateral shift available. You either take a demotion, or change careers.Report

    • North in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      Yeah and if you haven’t flattered or pleased someone enough to get a media perch, a policy sinecure or a lobbying gig you’re outta luck in the most adjacent fields to move into.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      On the other hand, there is something to be said about institutional knowledge and keeping with your job for a long time even in politics. Biden is an elder statesman and it shows and works to his benefit.Report

      • North in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        A good reason to oppose term limits (excluding the presidency- I think the 22nd was a good idea).Report

        • Michael Cain in reply to North says:

          I worked for the state legislature here after term limits had been around long enough to bite. People complain about lobbyists gaining power. Permanent staff also gain a lot of power, as they become the institutional memory. “Yes, Sen. Johnson, we tried that six years ago. Here’s all the ways we got sideways with the feds…”Report

          • North in reply to Michael Cain says:

            Yeah I’ve had the privilege of speaking to a number of people in or adjacent to elected legislative positions over the years and their stories are almost always identical to yours in theme. Both that term limits lock elected bodies into a perpetual state of inexperience and in other accounts that it’s the older experienced legislators that the staffers and state employees were wary of because you couldn’t get as many things over on them.Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        Oh, yeah, there are real benefits to having career politicians, especially in a system as massive as ours. And frankly I have no idea how to counter this particular drawback.

        But it is a drawback…Report

        • How about a smaller country(s)? A transcontinental country of 330M people is going to run largely by bureaucracy. There’s just no way 536 elected officials working principally in one city on one side of the continent are going to have a handle on any details. Especially when job one is to get reelected, leading to job two of always be fund-raising.

          Reading Philip H’s comments about the bureaucracy having whole notebooks of how to keep things running when the top people (and a couple of layers of appointees) get changed out is one of the cheerier things I’ve done in the past year.Report

          • Oscar Gordon in reply to Michael Cain says:

            Ideally that would be the point of the states, but everybody in state A just has to be all up in state B’s nitty gritty business, and everyone in state B wants to be all up in the minutia of state A’s business, and both are willing to leverage the federal government to make that happen.Report

  6. Doctor Jay says:

    Meanwhile:

    “Remaining silent emboldens the liar. I will not participate in that.

    “Those who refuse to accept the rulings of our courts are at war with the Constitution. Our duty is clear. Every one of us, who has sworn the oath must act to prevent the unraveling of our democracy. This is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans.” -Rep. Liz Cheney

    I don’t think these are words just for public consumption, but a legitimate expression of her feelings.

    AND

    I think Cheney believes she can keep her seat, and when the dust settles the Trumpers will have lost, and she will be positioned well. I hope she’s right.

    We have 30-35 percent of the country at war with the Constitution. Not good times.Report

    • Philip H in reply to Doctor Jay says:

      It will be tough to unseat her. Her state has been represented by her family along time, and when it comes to the retail portion of politics in a reelection, she can press the flesh as well as anyone. Plus she has a Huge war chest independent of most of the PACs.Report

  7. Jaybird says:

    Welp.

    Report