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Michael McLeod
even if I didn't fall on one side or the other - and have a deep concern for the state of the republic - I'd be obsessed with the psychology behind all this:
"In the modern Republican Party, there has never been anything quite like Liz Cheney’s war with Donald Trump. Whereas once, the party’s most heated rivalries were primarily ideological — like the feud between Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater — today’s have little to do with policy. Instead, they are about rival systems of honor that are remaking identity politics on the right.
These competing honor systems grow in different social milieus: One is relatively blue collar and home to Mr. Trump’s MAGA movement, while the other is college educated and home to Ms. Cheney’s Never Trumpers. Like so much of American society, the G.O.P. is coming apart by class.
Though Ms. Cheney seems to view Mr. Trump as someone without principle, he lives by a code. As Bob Woodward once described it: “Never show weakness. You’ve always got to be strong. Don’t be bullied. There is no choice.”
This ancient way of life, which permeated the Queens of Mr. Trump’s youth and is generally familiar to citizens outside the professional class, has gone by many names in America: “hillbilly justice” in Appalachia, the “code of the street” in poor urban neighborhoods and the “code of the West” in many Western states, including Wyoming, which Ms. Cheney represents in the House. The people who live in these honor cultures, as social scientists call them, are expected to protect their honor by always standing up to their enemies and generally letting others know they are not to be messed with.
Because an honor culture requires those who are slighted or dissed to seek vengeance, Mr. Trump is obsessed with Ms. Cheney. At the Save America rally on Jan. 6 last year, he implored, “The Liz Cheneys of the world, we got to get rid of them.” And during his first public appearance since leaving the White House, he singled out Ms. Cheney once again by noting that her “poll numbers have dropped faster than any human being I’ve ever seen.”
Wyoming has long been shaped by an honor culture, as the Cheney family must know well. Dick Cheney had to navigate it as a student at Natrona County High in the 1950s. When he was caught fighting on school grounds, his teacher required both combatants to duel it out in a boxing match. After seeking a boxing coach, Mr. Cheney won the showdown. Proceeds from the event went to the school booster club.
Until recently, though, the honor culture of Mr. Cheney’s high school had little to do with the Wyoming Republican Party, which was insular and run by affluent ranchers and members of the professional class. Now that culture is remaking the highest reaches of the party as MAGA insurgents wrest control from the establishment. Hence, state party meetings, once sleepy and wonky affairs, are increasingly marked by bravado.
At the Republican state convention in 2020, for example, a fistfight broke out between two county chairmen that sent one to the hospital with a broken ankle and dislocated shoulder. The man who won the scrape is not to be messed with: He has reportedly attended meetings with a gun at the ready, as well as an ax handle, which, according to his attorney, he uses as a cane.
This insurgent, blue-collar culture has not been well received by the Never Trump politicos in Wyoming. Susan Stubson, an attorney aligned with the establishment told us, “I find it threatening.” Another prominent member of Ms. Cheney’s circle called it “toxic.”"
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