Representative Liz Cheney lost her GOP primary in Wyoming Tuesday night, falling to a Donald Trump-endorsed challenger after becoming a vocal Republican dissident against the former president following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, writes Politico.
"I have said since Jan. 6 that I will do whatever it takes to ensure that Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office, and I mean it," Cheney said at the close of her speech. "This is a fight for all of us together."
Cheney loses primary after becoming face of GOP opposition to Trump (Politico)
Excerpt from Politico: Cheney, who was seeking a fourth term, was defeated by Harriet Hageman, an attorney and former Cheney supporter who Trump selected last year as his chosen candidate to oppose her. Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection, her vocal defense of that vote and her leadership role on the House committee investigating the attacks and Trump’s actions made her Trump’s top political target in the midterms. She made her opposition to Trump, whom she has repeatedly described as a threat to democracy, a core part of her political identity — and it consigned her to double-digit defeat in heavily pro-Trump Wyoming. Hailing from a state that voted for Donald Trump by more than 40 percentage points in 2020, Cheney is an often-lonely face of intra-party resistance against the former president. On Tuesday night, she cast her fight for the soul of her party as an existential one — repeatedly invoking the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln as a model, while chastising Republican office-seekers who have followed Trump.
According to the Associated Press, Liz Cheney’s resounding primary defeat marks the end of an era for the Republican Party as well as her own family legacy, the most high-profile political casualty yet as the party of Lincoln transforms into the party of Trump.
Cheney’s defeat end of an era for GOP; Trump’s party now (Associated Press)
Excerpt from the Associated Press: The fall of the three-term congresswoman, who has declared it her mission to ensure Donald Trump never returns to the Oval Office, was vividly foreshadowed earlier this year, on the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. As the House convened for a moment of silence, Cheney, who is leading the investigation into the insurrection as vice chair of the 1/6 committee, and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, stood almost alone on the Republican side of the House floor. Democratic lawmakers streamed by to shake their hands. Republicans declined to join them. "Liz Cheney represents the Republican Party as it used to be. ... All of that is gone now," said Geoff Kabaservice, vice president of political studies at the center-right Niskanen Center.
For Cheney, this period of political life is not only about Trump; it is about the decisions that Republicans have made to defend him. Unlike most of her Republican colleagues, the Wyoming representative is willing to lose her seat to take down Donald Trump, writes the New Yorker.
Liz Cheney’s Kamikaze Campaign (New Yorker)
Excerpt from the New Yorker: In late June, Liz Cheney, the conservative congresswoman from Wyoming, travelled to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, in Simi Valley, California, to give a speech on the future of the Republican Party. She told the audience, "To argue that the threat posed by Donald Trump can be ignored is to cast aside the responsibility that every citizen—every one of us—bears to perpetuate the Republic." The previous evening, she had led a bombshell hearing of the January 6th select committee, at which a former White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, who is twenty-six, had given a striking account of Trump’s inner circle on the day of the Capitol assault—of the President’s efforts to join the crowd and of his aides’ mounting alarm at his behavior. "Her superiors, men many years older—a number of them are hiding behind executive privilege, anonymity, and intimidation, but her bravery and her patriotism yesterday were awesome to behold,” Cheney told the audience. "To the young women who are watching tonight—these days, for the most part, men are running the world, and it is really not going that well."
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