Liz Cheney lost her primary tonight, and I am having a hard time mustering up any strong feelings about it. Sure, she’s right about Trump, but she is literally awful about everything else, so it’s not like having the Trump picked lunatic replacing her is going to be any different in 99.99999% of the stuff. For the most part, here’s no difference between the two of them, and having Cheney in the house isn’t going to change the downward trajectory of the Republican party.
Sure, she was a nice cudgel to use against the most vile President in our nation’s history, but Trump is only the vilest for now. The current Republicans are baking up something worse as we speak.
So Cheney, or Hageman, or whoever, it basically boils down to the fact that two different flavors of shit are, in the end, still shit. Whatever. Good riddance.
Old School
Any possibility Cheney will run a write-in campaign? Or has she ruled that out?
scav
People do often earn others’ indifference.
moops
I think that the Trump cult consuming and disgorging an old GOP family will have long lasting negatives for the party. the old money know TFG is a sham.
Elizabelle
Cuts to the chase.
Yep. But, courage is so rare, and Cheney was brave in going up against TFG and the swine in her party.
I wish her the insight that her party is beyond saving.
AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue team
Obviously Dems are to blame.
Redshift
The only real reason to hope she won was that it would piss off the trumpnuts, and possibly scare more rats into fleeing the ship. I hope she gets adopted as the “one reasonable conservative” unicorn the political media are always sure must exist, and is given a platform to continue sticking the shiv in.
piratedan
I dunno, she serves (and will continue to serve) as some kind of Rubicon for me, sure, you can be a complete and total shit, but even she knows that when you lose, you have lost and not perpetuating this political fantasyland that the majority of the GOP has chosen to inhabit.
she’s the lowest common denominator, politically… and I believe that there are still more cowards in place in the GOP than true Trump believers over there, and tbh, not sure which is worse.
Felanius Kootea
@Old School: I think Wyoming has a sore-loser law that prevents that but I’m not 100% sure.
I disagree with John on one thing. Yes, she may have voted with Trump 99% of the time (and voted *for* him twice) but it’s important to have opponents who actually believe in the country they live in and wouldn’t blow it all up for a con artist. The difference between a conservative asshole and a treasonous fascist is not an insignificant one.
Excuse me, I need to go shower after defending Cheney.
Another Scott
On Fresh Air with Teri Gross today, friend of the blog Adam Schiff said that lots of GQPers have told him that they want TFG gone but they’re too afraid to do what’s necessary. Liz losing will certainly teach them the wrong lesson – namely that their oath means much less than getting enough riled up monsters to vote for them in their primary.
She’s smart and will do ok. Her losing her primary is part of the process of the GQP destroying itself. We’ll have to see – as if we’re watching a car crash on TV – what comes after for them.
But mainly we have to do what we can to elect Democrats everywhere we can.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
Her bringing up that Lincoln lost a bid for Congress and then went on to win the presidency was a tell.
ian
We got Jan 6th committee with her in it, but we also had her vote in favor of the modest gun control bill and the same sex marriage codification. Her opponent (now all but guaranteed to win) is a hardcore Big Lie proponent who thinks 2020 was stolen (or at least says that out loud). It may not mean much in the long run dynamics of the US house or politics overall, but it was more than .00001%.
Jackie
@Old School: I’m guessing it wouldn’t change the outcome. Wyoming is 90% Trump supporting voters. Liz most likely skimmed off every non-Trumper plus crossover Dems/Independent available. Wyoming just swapped one Republican for another.
Ric Drywall
Her loss is obviously a win for the biggest MAGAists, so in that respect it’s a loss for us.
Omnes Omnibus
It’s an intra-GOP thing. She is awful, but she is better than the rest of them. The new one will be just like the worst of them. It’s kind of like explaining that Albert Speer was one of the better Nazis. So what? She’ll continue on the J6 Committee and maybe throw some figurative bombs. But, again, like Cole, I have difficulty mustering any sympathy for her.
SiubhanDuinne
I don’t like her or her vile parents, and I obviously don’t agree with her politically — but I respect the hell out of Liz. And let’s face it, Wyoming is never going to elect a Democrat to any kind of high office. I’d rather have a principled Liz Cheney, and fight her on policy, than a weaselly finger-in-the-wind opportunist like Harriet Hageman. No telling what she’s going to do in the long term, but for the moment she has a mission and it’s one I agree with. I’m not going to slag on her tonight.
Steeplejack
And she voted with Trump 93% of the time.
Mai Naem mobile
The silver lining i see here is that it may get her to push the 1/6 committee to hurry up and finish the hearings and tie up all the loose strings, at least to the extent they can because its obvious now there won’t be another republican on the committee assuming the committee even continues under a GOP led House.
Jackie
@SiubhanDuinne: Harriet Hageman is going to add more gray hairs to McCarthy’s head. Too bad, so sad. NOT.
ian
While we are on Wyo primary night, across the board the ‘moderates’ (still pretty darn conservative) got rocked by more extreme candidates. The ex-State Senate president is in a fight for his life, currently up 51-49, and the challengers won the Sec of State and Superintendent of Education races. Several long time state legislators have been primaried out. Many of these ‘moderates’ had substantial records of successfully bringing back the bacon to their communities. The shrieking monkey brigade did not care one bit.
Paul M Gottlieb
Strongly disagree with John on this one, and that’s coming from someone who thinks Liz Cheney is wrong about everything! If you haven’t noticed, the single most important question we are facing is whether we are going to continue as a republic under the rule of law, of degenerate into a fascist dictatorship. And tonight’s score was Fascists 1 Rule of law 0
Elizabelle
@NotMax: Too lazy to look up the link, but it was funny.
Stuart Stevens was a guest on the 9 pm Alex Wagner show. She asked if Cheney might run on the Forward party ticket.
Stevens said something like, no she was brighter than that. A real dis at Yang’s vanity project.
eclare
@NotMax: Ha! I noticed that too!
Elizabelle
If Liz Cheney really wants to make a difference, she should go after Rupert Murdoch’s empire, and the other purveyors of fake news.
Murdoch built her loss. Trump just saw the decay in the party and moved in on it like a. …
All these extremists and election deniers getting nominations? That is Fox News and its even nastier purveyors of rightwing lies and spin. Murdoch and Limbaugh and Breitbart, etc. mainstreamed what had been the John Birch fringe and other nutjobs.
Funny, when one story was that her father insisted the TVs be tuned to Fox News when he arrived at his accommodations while traveling.
That shit helped take down your daughter, Dick.
James E Powell
Republican voters tossing Liz Cheney out because she doesn’t like Trump is pretty much proof that the problem in our nation is Republican voters.
eclare
@James E Powell: Same as it ever was…
HumboldtBlue
delete
SiubhanDuinne
@Jackie:
Hageman has that weird cray-cray look in her eyes, at least in the couple of photos I’ve seen. She looks like a total wackaloon. She’ll fit right in with Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Jackie
@SiubhanDuinne: I know. Flat out creepy. I hope she’s crazier than Boebert and MTG. I bet she even creeps out TFG, but, losers can’t be choosers.
nasruddin
@Another Scott: “lots of GQPers have told him that they want TFG gone but they’re too afraid to do what’s necessary.”
This is obviously a manipulative lie. One of the necessary things is to vote against Trump-enabling cultists. Look at the voting in WY – it’s 66% – 30% against Cheney. They have nothing to fear in the voting booth.
nasruddin
@Paul M Gottlieb: Yeah …. I think that 0.00001% was, in the long run, the only part that really mattered.
It suggests to me we need to get ready for what’s coming, & what’s coming is going to look a lot like 1860. This problem cannot be fixed politically.
Doc Sardonic
@SiubhanDuinne: She’s crazier than a shithouse rat….but she is the worst kind of that variety, she was(emphasis on was) a staunch Cheney backer, but smelled an opportunity and latched on to the crazy. These are the most dangerous ones, they can and will shift their allegiance at the drop of the hat.
cursorial
@Felanius Kootea: I have to agree with you and a few other commenters above here. I can’t ever see voting for her, but if I grant that there are always going to be people representing a different and non-overlapping set of interests than mine, I’d hope they would display this degree of conviction.
Her losing this primary because she took a principled stand means (to quote our esteemed host) that it’s likely all tire rims and anthrax dates from here on in…
Shalimar
I would have voted for Cheney given that choice, but I’m not sure it would be a good vote. She’s doing what is right, but she is also extremely ambitious and she sees being anti-Trump as her path. The next Republican president, the one who starts the war with China that destroys humanity, is never going to be Harriet Hageman. It could easily be Liz Cheney after a 6-10 year wait.
scav
Well, now that’s she’s outside the tent, we’ll just have to see the direction she pisses.
iacta alea est
Cameron
Adios Cheyney? Screw it, adios Mexico.
https://youtu.be/uR7h_LAo3RA
Shalimar
@Elizabelle: Murdoch and talk radio created the monster and still nominally lead it, but they aren’t in control anymore. Remember that 3-month period after November 2020 when Fox News was out of step with Trump’s supporters and rapidly bleeding viewers to the upstart ultra-right networks? Fox does. They changed their messaging and wooed back their viewers, but they know now how tenuous their place is in the heirarchy.
Redshift
@Elizabelle:
Leopards, faces, etc.
But I hope you’re right.
On that subject, Fox happened to be on in a restaurant where I was waiting for takeout earlier, and if the segments I saw were any indication, there’s not a lot in current political news they want to talk about. There was a Jesse Watters piece about rampant shark bites in America this summer. Then a weak-ass Tucker Carlson attempt to portray the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot as an attempt by a rogue FBI agent to entrap innocent 2nd Amendment advocates to boost his supposed side business security company.
But the best was a promo for Tucker’s next streaming (I think) investigation about… wait for it…
Cattle mutilations!
Elizabelle
@Redshift: Cattle mutilations, you say?
Leopards. Could be involved.
Elizabelle
@Shalimar: I don’t know why we have to have such respect for Murdoch’s craven media empire. He endangers democracies.
HumboldtBlue
@Redshift:
Now that’s a Saturday Afternoon.
Brachiator
I prefer someone who believes in democracy over any Trump humper. I prefer almost any conservative who is willing to stand up to Trump, and who would bury him politically, over any right-wing nutcase who believes election fraud conspiracy nonsense.
Conservatives in Wyoming are full of shit, but in the past many of them seemed to believe in the Constitution. And the state has a quirky history.
That Wyoming voters still show any hint of loyalty to Trump is not good.
patrick II
When that one vote difference in a thousand is which electors to seat in 2024 you will care a little more about that one vote.
Dangerman
I wonder if Trump likes to go quail hunting.
Balconesfault
I have been telling the moderate conservatives I know … If you ever want to have a Republican candidate in the future who you don’t have to hold your nose to vote for … you have to vote Democratic in this election.
At this point, any vote for any Republican in a general election just reinforces the rightward march of the party.
HumboldtBlue
@Balconesfault:
Been that way for a minute.
ColoradoGuy
I have to admit I’m uneasy when Brownshirts win elections. One more reason to avoid Wyoming.
bjacques
If you need any proof the Deep State is overrated or at least past its peak, the daughter of an Inner Party member losing to a rank amateur is probably it.
Dan B
I’m feeling a sensation of having difficulty breathing. Cheney’s loss may be 70 / 30 – 40 points! There are a lot of voters who believe Murdoch and spinoff’s lies that letting any minority into power will precipitate lawless chaos. My in laws who listen to FOX were sure that most of Seattle was on fire during the George Floyd protests when there were half a dozen nuts who the majority vigorously opposed and the police threw flash bangs and tear gas into non-violent crowds. A couple businesses were fire bombed in a very small area but the in-laws saw FOX and footage from other areas, probably war zones overseas.
I believe that this country must strengthen laws against propaganda if democracy is to survive. It only needs a delicate touch to bring about important shifts.
Dan B
@Elizabelle: Love your take on the source of rot in most English speaking countries. Not Canada or New Zealand- why?* /s
*Murdoch media banned. Funny that..
prostratedragon
@Dan B: Create a species of fictitious person who could sue for reckless disregard of the truth in public matters? Sounds fraught with difficulties, but then corporations are supposed to be fictitious persons are they not?
Dan B
@Another Scott: Saw a documentary on Joe McCarthy recently. It was a media event, broadcasting weeks of hearings live on TV that showed he was a rage filled and raging bully, that and Edward R. Murrow in an hour (or more?) long broadcast. There was an attorney who was not afraid of McCarthy and eviscerated him with wicked sharp wit until McCarthy, quite sozzled, snapped.
There must be people who can implement a strategy to take down, or at least defuse, the Trumpists and fellow travelers.
Dan B
@prostratedragon: IANAL so the intricacies evade me. Establishing a commission that reviews public licenses based upon public benefit, like in olden times, would also be nice.
Tony Jay
I’m sure Cheney will be just fine. Her Daddy’s wide-ranging network of connections and her own role as avatar of the Never Trump sect of the wider Republican cult will cushion her temporary fall quite comfortably, thanks very much, and you can bet whatever small change you have on your person that the savvy savants of US political media will already be queueing up to offer her all the bully pulpits she could ever want.
Hell, spared the drudgery of having to grub for votes every two years she’ll likely be much happier, as will the MSM, who can recast her as the central character in their favoured narrative about a stern but loving Daddy Party with all the hard but fair solutions to America’s ills just waiting in the wings for the current madness to recede. It’s perfect for them. The Princess-in-Exile of Traditional Republicanism always on call to give her gravelly take on how the uncouth MAGAts and the doddering Democrats are both failing America, and how the country desperately needs a dose of Bush Era “compassionate conservatism” to right the ship of state.
Dollars to donuts, if they can get her on board with it her brand of neo-conservative, tax-cutting, face-shooting brutality will be presented as the epitome of the sensible moderate centre. Which is as bizarre as it is predictable. And all because she made the cynical calculation that her personal ambitions couldn’t be achieved in a Trumpist Republican Party.
prostratedragon
@Dan B: Not one either. Just thinking about an analogy in defamation suits that gets around the 1st amendment. Public service commissions could administer, but the ones I can think of at this hour regulate markets — more sacred to many, but less constitutional.
brantl
@SiubhanDuinne: Liz Cheney said torture was not only OK, but the smart, moral option. She comes from a father who said it was OK to attack anyone who you THOUGHT MIGHT BE thinking of attacking you. She is only slightly less of a monster than these other people, she’s only sorry they stole her game/ niche.
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
I don’t much care what happens to Cheney. That’s not really the issue. The GOP has gone from Thou Shall Not Speak Ill About Republicans to more specifically Thou Shall Not Speak Ill About Trump Or His Crimes. Some of the Trump backed hacks are no doubt cynics who will say anything to get ahead, but others are true believers, and that is not good for the country.
I doubt that Cheney will be turning up as a pundit on Fox News. She probably will not be big on the conservative speaking circuit. She might turn up on MSNBC, but no one will much care.
To the contrary, Trumpism is triumphant. The country may sometimes vote for Republicans, other times for Democrats. But the Republicans have finally purged moderates from their ranks. The only GOP option is Extremist GOP. Having secured tax cuts, their focus now is undoing every significant social advance since the Roosevelt Administration. I have read some conservatives prattle about getting prayer back into schools, an issue I thought was as settled as Roe.
Cheney could easily have continued to be a GOP star had she only bent the knee to Trump. She could have ignored him and gone on her merry way, which was no big thing since her vote on conservative issues would have been exactly the same as before. Her fall from grace is entirely due to daring to oppose Trump.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Basically, Papa Cheney sowed the wind, and his children are reaping the whirlwind.
Mary Cheney’s the one I feel sorry for.
lowtechcyclist
She’s also sane on Covid-19, and pro-Ukraine. So along with 1/6, that’s three major issues where she departs from the bulk of her party. Sure, the vast majority of the time she’s still of the same mindset as the GQP, but she differs on more than just the insurrection.
I don’t know if she can run as an independent, or if the Dems can nominate her as their candidate, but for the next two years, better her than whatever nutcase the Wyoming Republicans chose yesterday.
Brachiator
A blast from the past in Alaska.
Under a voter-approved elections process being used for the first time in Alaska elections this year, party primaries have been scrapped and ranked choice voting is being used in general elections. The top four vote-getters in a primary race, regardless of party affiliation, are to advance to the general election.
Dirty politics always finds a way.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
Have to disagree. I’m talking about the mainstream media. The Both-Sides chorus who have served the Republican Party cause for decades. They enjoyed the chaotic hellride of Trump’s term while it lasted, sure, but now the GOP is out of power and the Democrats are making people’s lives better that kind of free-range violence is increasingly dangerous.
So they want the old-school GOP back. The Party that gave them tax-cuts, big wars and the nice, dogwhistling kind of racism you can wink at over cocktails. If they can’t get it in actuality and they have to wait for Trumpism to burn itself out at the ballot box, never mind, they can just create a shadow-GOP to play the role on TV and in broadsheet opinion pieces.
And we’ll have to agree to disagree as to – why – Cheney was willing to burn this phase of her career by fronting the Never Trump faction. I say she looked at the future and decided that she couldn’t currently achieve the kind of lasting power she wanted in a Party that had become so unbalanced by the weight of Trump’s needy ego, so she’s sacrificing a few pawns now to put herself (potentially) into a better position a decade or so down the line. YMMV.
raven
While we are whining how about that Joe Manchin??
MagdaInBlack
@NotMax: It certainly was, wasn’t it.
Brachiator
Putting it into perspective
Trump may be politically wounded. I certainly hope he goes to prison for his crimes, or at least has to pay some massive fine.
But Trumpism is the toxic legacy of his mal-administration.
Baud
Jill Biden has covid.
CindyH
@ian: agree – Big Lie proponents are dangerous imo
Betty Cracker
@Paul M Gottlieb:
QFT.
Baud
They showed excerpts of Cheney’s concession speech on MJ. It was good.
CindyH
@Paul M Gottlieb: yes, this
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
Okay. I’m talking about the country and democracy. In general I don’t give a rat’s ass about the mainstream media.
We are far beyond that. The media, here and in the UK, like to believe that they have some power beyond propping up and sucking up to those who call the shots. They are malicious and can do some damage, but mainly they enjoy being obedient dogs.
The Supreme Court has stripped away women’s reproductive rights and are just getting started in doing as much harm as they can. Nobody gives a shit as to what some op-ed piece might have to say. And the United States does not do shadow governments. The never Trumpers came close, but no one really trusted them or took them seriously. And they have no real influence other than acting as spoilers.
Trumpism might burn the country down before it burns itself out. The press can’t control or even contain the blaze.
Come November, Cheney doesn’t have a political career. What might happen a decade from now doesn’t matter.
Spanish Moss
@Paul M Gottlieb:
I see it this way as well. And unfortunately this kind of result discourages other Republicans from standing up for the rule of law.
And I have to say that as a woman I really enjoyed seeing a woman featured so prominently in the hearings, and absolutely killing it. I can’t wait to see what she does next on her mission to keep Trump from holding office again.
Betty
@Shalimar: Yes. She was on a path to lead the party until the Insurrection. She seemed pretty dangerous because the media would have supported her and her fairly radical agenda. I am sure the Cheneys plan on being back.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@SiubhanDuinne: Same. I respect her courage. I may diagree with her policies, but at least i don’t doubt her patriotism, her belief in our Democracy.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Spanish Moss: This.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Brachiator: The quote about economics comes to mind: “The market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent.”
As for Cheney, the GOP can remain insane for longer than she can remain politically relevant. They’ve gone full fascist-Brownshirt-book-burners, and the last time a major world power had a political party like that, with real power to it, it took a nuclear war to dislodge them.
gvg
I don’t think Cheney will ever hold any power again let alone run for President. I can’t tell if she thinks it’s possible but I don’t think so. She stood up for rule of law in that you have to be willing to acknowledge you lost when people vote against you. That is almost the most important rule in democracy. Most of the rest of her party does not agree with it which is a big problem. I am not positive her father would have even though he stood up for his daughter, which is a different thing.
That said, I think she may have been always somewhat vulnerable in Wyoming because her father was not really a long time Wyoming politician and “moved” there to be elected with Bush. Still, it doesn’t reflect well on Wyoming nor republicans. If they voted for the democrat in November I’d forgive them but I understand there is no chance.
I also do not think she will get a lucrative pundit or think tank job after this. I think all of that is going to be in disarray for some time and a lot of it is going MAGA now.
MisterDancer
FUCK. FUCK!
I hate going against Cole here. But yes, as others have said, Cheney losing really matters — but not because of Liz, or dick, whom I hated with a passion.
In this, I’m reminded of the people who used to run around, saying Bush was not just the worst President, but the worst imaginable. Then we got Trump, and people say that about him. But I imagine a DeSantis as President — someone who’s learned the worse of the lessons of Trumpism, but has the mental acuity to inflict harm in a truly sadistic and focused way — and my blood runs to ice.
We can always have worse. And this person who beat Cheney, will be worse than Cheney at her worse, which was all too often to begin with.
As others have said, we’re in a rearguard action to save democracy. Every time we lose someone who at least nominally defends democracy, we lose.
It does not help to “heighten the contradictions” if the extremists keep winning. It does not help to have an extremist in a role where they can get a microphone whenever they want, and actually push our shitty media to be even more shitty.
And it does not help to have the other extremists have even more power and sway in our Nation’s Legislature.
I, too, have no love for Cheney. As someone who watched Islamphobia harm a culture and people I knew and still care about, I’m not playing tiddly-winks with Liz Cheney’s shitty actions, AT ALL.
But neither am I incapable of seeing the great harm that this new Congessperson can do, esp. if we do lose the House. I do not wish to come back, 2 years from now, and have to rue the day this person won, and we lost Cheney.
But I fear, greatly, I — and all of us — shall.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Brachiator:
A decade from now, the Joint Powers Occupation of the Former United States will name Liz to serve in a ministerial post in a provisional government, with the idea of drafting a new organizational document with a unicameral parliamentary legislature and weak executive. She’ll help administer the repair of civil war damaged urban infrastructure in the South, Rust Belt and Midwest.
Relatively undamaged areas along the East and west coasts will continue to be guarded by their own national guard and police units as multinational peacekeeping forces continue to pacify interior areas….
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@MisterDancer:
Reminder – it isn’t about preserving democracy – it’s about preserving government by the consent of the governed, a far more ominous proposition.
Shalimar
@Elizabelle: I agree he’s horrible. Unrelenting lies and propaganda.
The Castle
While I have no love lost for Liz Cheney, I do think there is cause to mourn the continued descent of one of our main political parties into crazy cultism and nihilism, a party based on nothing but infinite, insatiable resentment. And this is another data point to hammer that home. Nearly all Republicans are at least complicit in this. There are many well monied bad actors that have enabled this to happen as well. Well, Frankenstein is loose. This is a very bad thing for our country.
J R in WV
@Balconesfault:
Fixed that for ya!!!
I know this thread has been dead for a while now, but what the hell, here it is for the records!