Cheney’s predictable Wyoming loss frees her up to focus on taking down Trump and his GOP allies.
Liz Cheney lost on Tuesday night. The question is whether it was a battle or a war.
The immediate political fate of the three-term Wyoming Congress member had been a foregone conclusion; public polling consistently had Cheney lagging her Donald Trump-backed opponent Harriet Hageman, and the big margins — 65 to 31 percent with 59 percent of the votes reporting — also came as no surprise.
Instead, Cheney had sought to characterize her race as part of an existential struggle for American democracy that pitted her against Trump. Her closing ad featured her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking straight to camera and insisting that “in our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”
In her remarks after her defeat on Tuesday, Cheney returned to this message, showing her willingness to target Trump and the Republicans who abet him. “Two years ago, I won this primary with 73 percent of the vote,” she said. “I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would’ve required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic. That was a path I could not and would not take.”
Cheney repeatedly referenced the Civil War and drew comparisons to the current political climate in the United States. “Our nation is barreling, once again, toward crisis, lawlessness, and violence,” she said. She went on to seemingly declare war on much of the Republican Party — which has nominated candidates who have echoed Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election across the country — by adding, “No American should support election deniers for any position of genuine responsibility.
