Liz Cheney Has a Plan to Stay Relevant. And Yes, It Involves Trump.
Sometimes it is hard to tell whether former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) is delusional or if she is simply trying to maintain relevance. Over the past few years, the former lawmaker has focused her entire political career on opposing former President Donald Trump. Indeed, her bizarre obsession with the Orange Man What Is Bad™ cost Cheney her seat in Congress.
Yet, even after being ousted, Cheney is still fixated on preventing Trump from winning a second term in office. Her vendetta against the former president has now extended to the rest of the Republican Party, according to a new report from the Washington Post.
Liz Cheney is considering many different political roles over the next several years. But there’s one certainty she’s trying for in the next 11 months: Defeating her former House GOP colleagues and electing a new Democratic majority.
Cheney believes that the 2024 presidential contest could end without any candidate securing a majority of the electoral votes — an outcome that would toss the decision into the House. Or, ex-president Donald Trump could again contest the outcome if he loses the electoral college. That’s why she believes a Democratic majority is the only safeguard for democracy.
“I think that’s why it’s so important that the Republicans not be in the majority in 2025. And that’s, again, for me to be sitting here saying that, is a pretty stunning thing,” said the former three-term lawmaker, who served in House GOP leadership, whose father served 12 years as a House Republican and eight years as a GOP vice president and whose mother served two Republican presidents.
Incidentally, Cheney has been making the media rounds to promote her new book “Oath and Honor,” which tells the story of her political career. Perhaps “From Neocon to Establishment Shill” might have been a better title.
Cheney recently elicited some groans and laughter when she teased a potential independent run for the presidency, and elite media outlets have been eager to have her on to parrot her “Trump is so awful” talking points.
However, the former lawmaker has also set her sights on the GOP and is now firmly in lockstep with the Democrats.
But Cheney has held almost as much contempt for her former House colleagues, who vaulted her to the No. 3 leadership post after just one term in Congress. Quickly and decisively, House Republicans fell in line behind Trump, retired or, like Cheney, lost their GOP primary to a Trump-backed firebrand, replaced by political sycophants.
“I don’t think that the people who are in charge on the Republican side in the House of Representatives today can be counted on to stand up against Donald Trump,” she said during a 45-minute interview on Friday in a private club in Georgetown.
This brings us back to my original question: Does Cheney actually believe she has enough influence to prevent Trump and Republicans from winning in 2024 or is she only doing this to remain relevant and sell more sleeping aids books about her political career?
One would think Cheney would know that she lacks the popularity to make a difference in the upcoming election. The number of Republican voters that would follow her is infinitesimal, and Democrats aren’t going to care much about her going on TV to regurgitate their anti-Trump beliefs at them.
On the one hand, Cheney has shown a remarkable level of tone deafness. Indeed, her decision to double, triple, and quadruple down on her irrational fixation on Trump even after losing her leadership position betrayed a stunning inability to read the room. It wasn’t just the fact that she disliked Trump, it was the fact that she could talk about nothing else.
Conversely, Cheney might have finally realized that her time is up and is desperately clinging to any semblance of relevance that she can muster. She knows that going full anti-Trump can be quite lucrative these days, and that being a Republican willing to turn on their party will undoubtedly gain plaudits and adoration from the left-wing intelligentsia. She might just be trying to cash in while she still can.
Either way, given the current political climate, it is unlikely that Cheney’s continued presence on the national stage is going to amount to a whole lot of nothing regardless of how the election turns out.
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