Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney launched her reelection campaign on Thursday, the same day a pollster showed her down 30 points to her likely primary opponent, Harriet Hageman.
Her quest for a fourth term is likely to be her first step into political oblivion. The Republican primary is on August 16th and will for all intents and purposes end her political career. Even if Wyoming’s “open ballot” rules result in every Democrat in the state changing their party affiliation the day of the election so they can vote in the Republican primary, Cheney is history.
She knows this is the end and yet she insists on not leaving the scene without a noisy exit. Because of her vocal and strident defiance of Donald Trump, House Republicans ousted her from her role as conference chair in May 2021. Up until then she held the Number Three position behind the Republican Minority Leader (Kevin McCarthy) and Republican Minority Whip (Steve Scalise).
Six months later Wyoming’s Republican Party voted to no longer recognize her has a Republican. And yet she continues to campaign as a Republican, hoping, somehow, that enough Democrats and Independents will come to her aid in August to salvage what’s left of her political career.
The poll released on Thursday by the polling firm WPAi (conducted on behalf of the conservative Club for Growth) shows Hageman leading Cheney 56-26, a 30-point advantage for the challenger.
On Saturday former President Donald Trump put his endorsement of Hageman on display before a crowd of thousands in Casper:
Over the next six months the people of Wyoming are going to vote to dump your RINO congresswoman Liz Cheney, and you’re going to send the incredible Harriet Hageman to Congress.
He reminded the crowd that it was Cheney who, touting herself as a Republican, now serves as vice chair of the January 6 investigation committee alongside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Said Trump: “It’s time you finally had a representative who will put America First and who is looking to Make America Great Again.”
Trump called out Cheney for her betrayals:
Worse than the terrible Democrats are the backstabbing RINO Republicans that are helping them do their act. And there is no RINO in America who has thrown in her lot with the radical left more than Liz Cheney….
[Cheney is] a lapdog for Pelosi, and a human soundbite machine for CNN and MSNBC.
In her reelection launch video Cheney avoided naming Trump but instead focused on appealing to disaffected Republicans in Wyoming, along with Democrats and Independents:
As we work together to fight for Wyoming, and the issues that matter to us, there are some things you can count on. When I know something is wrong, I will say so. I won’t waver or back down. I won’t surrender to pressure or intimidation. I know where to draw the line.
She wisely avoided mentioning inflation, gas prices, or the Biden administration’s crimps on energy production. After all, Wyoming is the eighth largest energy producing state in the union.
And she just might be using the video to angle a position as a “respectable Republican voice” on one of the major media platforms like CNN, CNBC, or Fox News after she is removed from political life starting August 17.
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