Since early last year, Wyoming Republican and Representative Liz Cheney has been on the outs with her own party. After all, when you publicly vote against that party’s leader and our president, you tend to make a few enemies.
And Cheney most certainly has.
It’s also cost her quite dearly. Since that fateful impeachment vote, she has been denounced by the Republican Party of Wyoming, demoted from several positions and council seats, and now, she’s even lost her primary to continue as US Representative.
One would have thought those losses would have taught her something. Like perhaps her constituents need to be listened to. Or that maybe she should be more honest with everyone, including herself. Perhaps she should even understand that her career is over.
And yet, as the weeks before the November midterms proved, she’s done nothing of the sort.
Rather than bowing out and going somewhere to hide out, lick her wounds, and think about her life choices, she’s gone on what we can only call some sort of revenge warpath, targeting the exact same party that once gave her such hope and respect.
Hell, she even praised liberal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently. And no, I’m not kidding.
During a Tuesday interview with PBS’s Judy Woodruff, Cheney not only endorsed her second Democratic candidate of the year but also spoke of one of the Democratic Party’s worst as a “tremendous leader.”
She told Woodruff, “I want to say a word about Speaker Pelosi. Everyone knows she is a liberal from San Francisco. I am a conservative from Wyoming. There are many, many, maybe most issues on which we disagree. But I think that she’s a tremendous leader.”
She went on to say that she has watched Pelosi “up close,” and what she has seen has made Cheney believe that Pelosi is a “leader of historic consequence.”
If you didn’t know, Pelosi was also up for re-election this year. There goes another Democratic endorsement from Cheney.
Her first was that of Democratic Representative Elissa Slotkin. Hell, she even went on the campaign trail with Slotkin last week. While speaking at a rally for the endorsee, Cheney talked about the need to lay politics aside for the good of our country, that we have to stand up and fight for what is right, even if that means looking beyond party lines.
Now, I believe there is definitely some truth to that. It’s not always about party lines and being on one side or the other. Sometimes compromise is needed, and bipartisanship is.
But Cheney is taking this to a whole new level, which she made clear later in the same interview with Woodruff.
After speaking of Pelosi, the host and Cheney began talking about other midterm races. In particular, the battleground state of Ohio was brought up, where democrat Tim Ryan faced off with newcomer and Republican J.D. Vance.
And here, too, Cheney chose a Democrat over her own. While she didn’t come out and say that she fully endorsed Ryan, she plainly stated that she would vote for him over Vance. It should be noted that Tim Ryan is quite radical, even calling for the nation to “kill MAGA” in recent weeks.
Then again, that’s probably exactly the reason Cheney likes him. As we all know, she’s neither a Trump fan nor a promoter of his policies or ideals. She’s been proving that for months while sitting alongside Pelosi in those January 6 House Select Committee meetings.
She and the only other Republican on the committee, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, have done well to ostracize themselves from their own party. So much so, in fact, that, rather than facing certain defeat in the primaries, Kinzinger announced his resignation.
Cheney, apparently, isn’t that smart, though.
She can’t even figure out what we all know to be true, and certainly what her recent endorsements have proved. She is a Democrat at heart. She might as well just admit it and join their party. Maybe she’d have better luck… Then again, there is a red wave going on.
