Regardless, after the vote to remove her as chair of the House Republican Caucus went down, the doomsday predictions flowed in. The GOP was supposed to be further marginalized, having “bent the knee to Trump” (even though the vote itself clearly wasn’t a referendum on Cheney’s opinion of Trump), and that was supposed to show up at the ballot box.
For evidence of those hot takes (see Republicans’ Overthrow of Cheney Risks Worsening Their Headaches and The GOP Hands Democrats the Formula to Keep the House Majority).
Well, I regret to inform you that the devastating effects of Liz Cheney’s Ouster on the GOP continue apace.
The mayoral race in Anchorage, AK, is over, and Republicans have flipped the office from blue to red. Yes, even in Alaska, the major urban center leans Democrat. Remember, we were assured that there would be down-ballot consequences for the GOP “embracing Trump” and ousting Cheney. When do those consequences show up?
Because they didn’t show up last week in Pennsylvania either, where Republicans well overperformed in a very high-turnout, off-year election with over 2 million ballots cast (see Pennsylvanians Strike a Blow to Tyranny and Republicans Get Some Really Good News).
Weird, right? You’d think Cheney being sidelined would have enraged all those Republican voters I was told cared so much about intra-party fighting and January 6th. I guess the talking heads whiffed again. Who could have possibly seen that coming?
Heck, we can even go back several weeks ago to when Cheney was reaching the pinnacle of her battle with her own party. Republicans swept TX-06, an only Trump +3 district in 2020, locking out the Democrats and seeing two GOP candidates to the runoff.
In short, stop listening to beltway talking heads. They have no idea what’s going on out in normie-land. Absolutely no one of consequences cares about Liz Cheney being sent to the backbench and it will have zero effect on elections going forward. Any opinion to the contrary is simply wish-casting by partisans that want to see their priors confirmed.