Liz Cheney is partisan, all right, and always has been. But the Republican Party today is, for all purposes, two parties — the old Establishment one of the Bushes, Colin Powell and her own father — and the modern, updated, anti-Establishment one founded and represented by Donald Trump, the man she has despised for years and is determined to see banished from American politics.

That would be an understandable, defensible and even laudable goal, were it not for the incontrovertible fact that the majority of her constituency back in Wyoming is madly for The Donald — and that it was that majority that returned her back to Congress to represent them, their interests and their political ideals. That is a function that this paragon of American democracy has no interest in performing, and that she is, in fact, deadset-determined not to perform.

It is true that she and the Wyoming citizenry might hold an interesting debate on the political and moral issues posed by the discrepancy, supposing both parties to be well-acquainted with Edmund Burke’s thoughts on the matter; but as that is almost certainly not the case, the honorable thing for Cheney to have done was to have turned down the Panetta Award flat — and announced that she will not run for reelection a year from now. Unfortunately, you don’t get awards from organizations like The Panetta Institute for behavior like that.