Defeating Liz Cheney, Trump demonstrates complete control over party
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WASHINGTON: Inner-party primary elections for the lone congressional seat in America’s least populated state — less than 600,000 people; a small town in India — shouldn’t normally matter to the rest of the world.
But these are extraordinary times in the United States, and the establishment Republican Liz Cheney’s resounding defeat at the hands of Trump-backed Harriet Hageman signaled the former President’s almost total stranglehold on the party.
Cheney is no ordinary Republican. A three-term lawmaker, she is the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney with impeccable conservative credentials that has seen her vote in line with Trump policies 93 per cent of the time. But her refusal to toe the former President’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him and her decision to vote to impeach him cost her the seat in her what has been her family pocket borough.
After polling less than a third of the votes to her opponent’s 66 per cent, Cheney conceded defeat but pledged to continue working to prevent Trump from returning to the White House. Pointing out that she had won the last party primary with 73 per cent of votes, she told her supporters that she could “easily have done the same again… but it would have required that I go along with Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. That was a path I could not and would not take.”
On his part, Trump, having purged a prominent critic from the party, gloated about her defeat, saying Cheney “should be ashamed of herself” for playing into the hands of those who wanted to destroy America, and hoping that she “will finally disappear into the depths of political oblivion…where she will be much happier than she is right now.”
Cheney indicated she is not going anywhere, and she is in fact thinking of running for President 2024 to thwart any Trump effort to return to the White House.
“I believe that Donald Trump continues to post a very grave threat and risk to our Republic. And I believe that defeating him will require a very broad and united front of Republicans, Democrats and Independents. And that’s what I intend to be a part of,” she declared, in a preview of the inner party insurgency that pundits are anticipating despite Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP.
With Cheney’s defeat, eight of the 10 Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach Donald Trump have either lost their primaries or have decided to retire in the face of imminent defeat. The few remaining dissenters are either lying low or have folded into the Trump camp after the former President has demonstrated his hold on the party.
But these are extraordinary times in the United States, and the establishment Republican Liz Cheney’s resounding defeat at the hands of Trump-backed Harriet Hageman signaled the former President’s almost total stranglehold on the party.
Cheney is no ordinary Republican. A three-term lawmaker, she is the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney with impeccable conservative credentials that has seen her vote in line with Trump policies 93 per cent of the time. But her refusal to toe the former President’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him and her decision to vote to impeach him cost her the seat in her what has been her family pocket borough.
After polling less than a third of the votes to her opponent’s 66 per cent, Cheney conceded defeat but pledged to continue working to prevent Trump from returning to the White House. Pointing out that she had won the last party primary with 73 per cent of votes, she told her supporters that she could “easily have done the same again… but it would have required that I go along with Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. That was a path I could not and would not take.”
On his part, Trump, having purged a prominent critic from the party, gloated about her defeat, saying Cheney “should be ashamed of herself” for playing into the hands of those who wanted to destroy America, and hoping that she “will finally disappear into the depths of political oblivion…where she will be much happier than she is right now.”
Cheney indicated she is not going anywhere, and she is in fact thinking of running for President 2024 to thwart any Trump effort to return to the White House.
“I believe that Donald Trump continues to post a very grave threat and risk to our Republic. And I believe that defeating him will require a very broad and united front of Republicans, Democrats and Independents. And that’s what I intend to be a part of,” she declared, in a preview of the inner party insurgency that pundits are anticipating despite Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP.
With Cheney’s defeat, eight of the 10 Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach Donald Trump have either lost their primaries or have decided to retire in the face of imminent defeat. The few remaining dissenters are either lying low or have folded into the Trump camp after the former President has demonstrated his hold on the party.
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