In a massive repudiation of Representative Liz Cheney, she lost her bid for another term in the Republican primary to Harriet Hageman Tuesday. When the votes were all counted, Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney (who had represented Wyoming in Congress several years ago) had managed only 28.9 percent of the vote.
Hageman won the nomination outright over Cheney and three other Republicans — who shared less than five percent of the vote — with an astounding 66.3 percent. Since Wyoming has 215,000 registered Republicans to a mere 36,000 Democrats, winning the Republican nomination is considered tantamount to election.
It was a huge collapse for Cheney, who had won her last primary by 73 points.
Cheney, first elected in 2016, had focused her entire last term on opposing former President Donald Trump, even being one of just a handful of Republicans voting to impeach Trump in late 2020. Then, she enthusiastically accepted appointment to the House committee created by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to “investigate” the events of January 6, when thousands of disgruntled Americans entered the U.S. Capitol during protests over the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Cheney was one of only two Republicans — both intensely anti-Trump — that Pelosi allowed on the committee. (The other was Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.)
In other words, the committee was viewed by most Republicans as a “kangaroo court,” with its conclusion — that Trump’s actions had precipitated the riot — already pre-determined. In fact, Cheney took the lead in the made-for-TV “hearings,” even going so far as to take Trump quotations out of context to cast him in the worst possible light. For example, she left out the part of his speech that day in which Trump urged his supporters to protest peacefully.
In June, Cheney said, “We are confronting a domestic threat that we have never faced before — and that is a former president who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional republic.”
Such rhetoric certainly appealed to hard-core Democrats across the country, the Democrats’ media allies, and establishment Republicans, but was not going to help her win a Republican congressional primary in Wyoming. In a vain effort to survive the Republican primary, Cheney’s campaign urged registered Democrats to change their registration and vote in the Republican primary instead — for her.
Such high-profile opposition to Trump and openly urging Democrats to manipulate the results of a Republican primary was political suicide in Wyoming, a state that Trump carried in 2020 by more than 43 points — the biggest margin of any state.
But arguing that Trump constituted a threat to “the foundations of our constitutional republic” was particularly hypocritical of Cheney, considering her father, Dick Cheney, openly advocated that presidents not seek congressional approval — as the Constitution clearly requires — before going to war. When President George W. Bush sought congressional approval for going to war in Iraq, Cheney argued that was unnecessary.
In February of 2002, Dick Cheney — then vice president — spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and said, “And it’s good to be back at the Council on Foreign Relations. As Peter mentioned, I have been a member for a long time, and was actually Director for some period of time. I never mentioned that when I was campaigning for reelection back home in Wyoming.”
Why would Cheney not mention his leadership position in the CFR? Because of its well-deserved reputation as a globalist organization, intent on increasing the power of globalist organizations like the United Nations, which would, of course, decrease the sovereignty of the United States. Daughter Liz has followed in her father’s footsteps as a defense “hawk” and a neoconservative. Neoconservatives advocate increased U.S. interventions in conflicts around the world.
In the run-up to the primary, Liz used ads featuring her father, who called Trump a “coward” who lies and “tried to steal the last election” using violence. It is likely that these TV ads by Dick Cheney only solidified Republican opposition to Liz Cheney.
Her Freedom Index score was 60 percent, but in Wyoming she could have been a 100-percenter and had no political fears. While she had voted with the Republicans on some good things, she further inflamed the opposition’s intensity when she voted for federal gun-control legislation in June. It goes without saying that Wyoming is not a state where gun-control legislation is very popular.
As the Wyoming Republican Party chairman, Frank Eathorne, told Fox News recently, “In Wyoming, we don’t necessarily embrace the idea of a big tent.”
It should be noted that Liz Cheney had some difficulty winning her initial Republican primary back in 2016 — although she later coasted in 2018 and 2020 to easy renomination — because she was seen as a carpetbagger, a person who had lived in the state very little over the course of her life and was simply running on her famous last name.
Cheney is defiant in defeat, with some indications that she is considering running for president in 2024 — as a Republican — so as to keep Trump from being the nominee again.
On NBC’s Today TV show, Cheney said that defeating Trump “will require a very broad and united front of Republicans, Democrats and Independents. And that’s what I intend to be a part of,” although she deferred committing to running against Trump herself. “That’s a decision that I’m going to make in the coming months.”
She added, “But it is something I’m thinking about.”
If she were to opt to run in 2024, it is quite certain that she would not fare well against Trump — or any other Republican — in a contest in Wyoming.
