To be fair, the article doesn't say she "just figured it out." This may not even be the first time she's discussed racism on the political right. At a minimum, she's been talking about authoritarianism on the right at least since 1/6.
I think this has to be put into wider context. She's a political conservative who agrees, and always has agreed, with the GOP platform on the vast majority of policy positions. She's likely always known there was both racism and authoritarianism on the right, but because she is politically aligned with the right based on policy positions, she likely convinced herself that it was more of a fringe. Until events during the Trump era, culminating with 1/6. Then she publicly split with fellow conservatives, and faced removal from leadership in the House, and censure. Much like Jeff Flake, who is also very conservative on policy, had to retire from the Senate because he knew he would get primaried out due to his opposition to Trump.
If the majority of Congressional republicans were like Cheney and Flake, we wouldn't be in this political crisis right now. We'd be back to the business as usual gridlock of dems having a hard time getting good policies passed, but without the worry of the country sliding into facist dictatorship, which is where we are right now. People like Cheney and Flake should encouraged, not criticized for being late to the game.