I have previously taken the Republicans to task for their constant opposition to taxes. A government with funds is clearly stronger than a poor government. There is a second serious problem with Republicans. The Republicans are not listening.

Every ten years, as required by the Constitution, a census is taken that determines how many members of Congress each state has. In January 2010, as the new census was started, the Supreme Court issued a decision called Citizens United, which permitted unlimited secret donations by corporations and wealthy individuals. The census determines how many members of the House of Representatives each state should have and how many Electoral College votes each state will have to elect the President of the United States. The total number of Electoral votes for a state is the two Senators plus the number of members of the House of Representatives, so if a state has 10 members [n the House of Representatives then it has 12 electoral votes. The census has always been a big deal in determining the relative strength of the political parties and who has the advantage when running for President. The process is considered fair because the census counts the number of individuals in the United States.

So when the conservative judges on the Supreme Court handed down the Citizens United decision in 2010, they knew full well that the money they were permitting would go to help conservatives get positive results from the census from 2010.

Boston College professor Heather Cox Richardson, in a crisp book for the interested reader states that by 2012 there were over 300 million dollars in dark money political donations. The 2012 election was a presidential election for Barack Obama’s second term and the election of a new Congress. Democrats received 1.4 million more votes for members of the House of Representatives, but the Republicans won a 33-seat majority. The Republican’s big victory enabled them to “hamstring” Obama’s agenda in his second term. This is political hardball and offends millions of fair-minded Americans, but it is far-removed from the sins committed by Donald Trump.

Professor Richardson’s “Democracy Awakening” is one of the books that damns Republicans and is written by a historian with Democratic leanings. It is thoughtful and persuasive. But a second book is written by a member of Republican royalty, whose family have been leaders in the Republican party since the Civil War.

Liz Cheney, whose father was vice-president to George W. Bush, is one in a long line of Republicans. She lives in Wyoming. While Professor Richardson takes the historian’s long view, Liz Cheney’s book puts the microscope on President Trump and his activities after the November 3, 2020 election. In “Oath and Honor,” she relies heavily on fellow Republicans to prove that Donald Trump was told by members of his campaign staff and presidential advisors that Joe Biden had won. This deep dive into Republican leadership gives her bestselling book an intimate view of efforts by Republicans who wanted the truth of Biden’s victory to guide decisions but were stymied by President Trump’s reliance on the big lie that his election was stolen.

Cheney, the third-ranking member of the House Republican leadership, presents a devastating portrait of Kevin McCarthy begging for Trump’s approval when his funding prowess dissipated and his willingness to say one thing one week and the exact opposite the next week. McCarthy resigned from the Congress in December 2023.

Cheney is not settling scores. She describes incidents, many of which were seen by the viewers of Fox television or the readers of the daily press. The power of her book comes from its reliance on Republican sources.

When it became clear that McCarthy and Cheney had irreconcilable differences, Cheney left her position in Republican leadership and became a member of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

At times her book reads like an adventure story, when members of Congress hunker down in a House Committee room while the mob tries to break down doors. At other times, she sounds like a super capable lawyer explaining the evidence collected by the Select Committee on the January 6 Attack—facts pile on facts, almost always from Republicans or members of the Trump administration, demonstrating that a bullheaded President refused to listen to the legal opinions stating that the election results were conclusive.

The dry language in the opening paragraphs of the U.S. Constitution turn into clear directive that the President is elected by the count of the members of the Electoral College, who are selected in the Presidential election. What seems obscure, to this reader, in the Constitution gains clarity as the lawyers explained the process to the President. An argument that gains heft as we learn that this is the way it has always been done since Washington was elected President.

Liz Cheney describes the steady accretion of evidence unearthed by the Select Committee. A desperate Trump of course insisted that the State legislatures could ignore the Electoral College, or he even told elected officials “to find” the votes he needed to win. Trump’s absurdity and corruption of legal procedures comes into full view. It’s a scary portrait she draws of an egotistical man who will listen to nobody but those who will support his wish for a victory despite the evidence of defeat. The conclusion isn’t novel, but the clarity of the evidence and the reasons why Trump is wrong make this a powerful book. Both Professor Richardson and Liz Cheney describe a dangerous situation where Trump would like to be President and rule the USA without opposition.

Liz Cheney argues that despite the knowledge by Republicans that this is dangerous and illegal they are unable to stop Trump. Thus, this year’s election has one party, the Democrats, supporting free elections, and the other major party bowing to Trump and asserting that his election was stolen. Democracy in the United States faces the greatest danger since the Civil War.