A Grand Old Party funeral

The old Republican Party only returns to Washington for funerals.

The party of neocons, National Review, and the Path to Prosperity has been subsumed by MAGA, America First, and the whims of President Trump. The old adherents have been banished to think tanks, The Bulwark, and the lecture circuit. For the last decade, this Republican Party in absentia finds their way back to Washington only to honor their dead and lament what they’ve lost.

On a blustery November Thursday, the old guard gathered to honor the life and legacy of former Vice President Dick Cheney, a totem of a party and political order long past. A creature of Washington, Cheney rose from an intern for Rep. William A. Steiger of Wisconsin, to White House chief of staff at age 34, to chairing the House Republican Conference, to Defense secretary during the end of the Cold War, to the most powerful and polarizing vice president in history orchestrating the War on Terror.

In contrast, Trump rose to power burning down the world Cheney had meticulously built through decades of public service. Trump’s relentless criticisms of the Iraq War set him apart from the crowded Republican presidential primary field in 2016, and his harsh words about Cheney and his family did not abate once he won.

Trump drummed Dick’s daughter Liz out of office and out of the Republican Party for daring to hold him accountable for Jan. 6. In turn, Liz Cheney and her father turned their backs on the party that abandoned them, endorsing former Vice President Kamala Harris for president in 2024.

It’s no surprise that Trump was not invited to the funeral. Other Trump administration officials did not attend either, a break from the high-minded civic approach normally expected at state funerals—another sign that this is Trump’s Washington now.

Instead of any currents or actings, a parade of formers paid their respects underneath the grand arches of the Cathedral: presidents (George W. Bush and Joe Biden), vice presidents (Harris, Mike Pence, Al Gore, and Dan Quayle), and congressional leaders (Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, and John Boehner).

In Trump’s Washington, state funerals like these are now sanctuaries for the Trump resistance diaspora—a group that makes for strange bedfellows.

Spotted before the service were Rachel Maddow and Anthony Fauci catching up (try explaining a Maddow appearance at Cheney’s funeral to an MSNBC viewer in 2005). There were George Conway and Bill Kristol walking by the GITMO stone on their way toward the restrooms. Sitting in a block near the front were Pelosi, Bennie Thompson, Adam Schiff, Fauci, Zoe Lofgren—nearly all of Biden’s preemptive pardons in one place.

But a “No Kings” rally, this was not.

The remembrances painted a picture of a “fiercely devoted family man,” according to Jonathan Reiner, Cheney’s longtime heart doctor. This was someone who was “smart, polished, and without airs,” according to Bush. The former president noted how deep the ties of the Cheney family ran. “As I learned in 2000, when you choose one Cheney, you get four,” Bush joked.

One of the four was Liz Cheney. A longtime Cheney aide observed to National Journal outside the cathedral that “Liz has been preparing for this speech her entire life.”

In her most public remarks since Trump returned to power, Liz Cheney eulogized not just her father, but the party he worked so hard to build.

“Dick Cheney became a Republican, but he knew that bonds of party must always yield to the single bond we share as Americans,” she said. “For him, a choice between defense of the Constitution and defense of your political party was no choice at all.”

As Liz delivered remarks commemorating sacrifice and the higher calling of patriotism, outside the church and just down the road, the current president was calling for Democrats to be hanged and put to death for posting a video reminding service members and intelligence officials to refuse illegal orders and to continue defending the Constitution.

Trump’s name was never mentioned during the entire proceedings, but as Liz Cheney walked off to the blaring notes of “Amazing Grace,” the gulf between the two men seemed as vast as Cheney’s native Wyoming sky.

As the remnants of the old Washington order shuffled out to their waiting cars, braced for the cold wind outside the church, many with the assistance of aides, canes, and wheelchairs, a prevailing thought took hold: See you at the next funeral.