USA: Trump’s brutal reckoning: Cheney loses in primary

United States
Trump’s brutal reckoning: Cheney loses in primary

It’s Donald Trump’s revenge: Republican Liz Cheney lost. In the US state of Wyoming, voters decided on Tuesday who will run for the Republican party for the seat in the House of Representatives. Harriet Hageman – Cheney’s Trump-backed opponent – won. Cheney will lose her seat in Congress in the midterm elections this fall. In doing so, she paid the price for her criticism of ex-President Trump.

Their defeat comes as no surprise – and yet it says a lot about the Republicans and their stance on the storming of the Capitol. But the loser is combative.

In the past few months, 56-year-old Cheney has become the face of education surrounding the events following the 2020 presidential election. She is Vice Chair of the House of Representatives Committee of Inquiry tasked with investigating the background to January 6, 2021. The daughter of ex-Vice President Dick Cheney has repeatedly warned in public hearings that democracy in the United States is in danger. Again and again she turned to the people in the country with a serious expression and denounced the machinations of Trump and his confidants. None of that did her any good in her Wyoming constituency — where Trump got 70 percent of the vote in the 2020 election. On the contrary.

In the rural state in the west of the country with less than 600,000 inhabitants, she was unable to convince people. She has represented Wyoming in the House of Representatives since 2017. She lost the backing of her party last year. After the storming of the Capitol, Cheney was among the handful of Republicans who voted with the Democrats in the House of Representatives to impeach Trump. At Trump’s instigation, she was voted out of her leadership position as number three in the group. She was formally reprimanded by the party for serving on the investigative committee into the Capitol attack.

The last sane one

In recent months, Cheney has occasionally seemed like the last sane in a party that largely follows Trump’s lies. The lawyer is a hardliner. A die-hard conservative who stood behind Trump and his policies when he was still in the White House. Cheney had once taken a stand against same-sex marriage, even publicly feuding with her sister, who is married to a woman. She now says that she regrets what she said back then.

By storming the Capitol, Cheney opposed Trump. Since then, an ice-cold wind has been blowing against her from the party. The New York Times recently wrote that she has not attended the meetings of the Republicans in the House of Representatives for a long time. In Wyoming, Trump finally chose Harriet Hageman to steal her seat in the House of Representatives from Cheney. Hageman keeps sowing doubts about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, helping to keep Trump’s lie about voter fraud alive.

It was clear that Cheney had no chance. She was hardly seen in Wyoming – according to the “New York Times” also because of threats against her. Hageman, on the other hand, toured the state. During the campaign, Cheney tried to get Democrats to register in the Republican primary. So she wanted to collect additional votes – that wasn’t enough. In June, she took part in a televised debate with Hageman and other candidates for the Congressional seat. Here, too, it became clear.

Cheney stands for Republican values

“I will never put any party above my duty to the country,” she said. “I’m not going to say something that I know is wrong just to win people’s votes and gain political support.” She represents Republican values: lean government, low taxes, strong defense. But there is currently a “cult of personality” – she does not want to be a part of it.

Hageman objected. “People in Wyoming don’t think they’re going to be represented in Congress right now because our representative isn’t coming to Wyoming,” Hageman said. The people there are not interested in the Capitol attack and find the whole subcommittee unfair. Trump was an “excellent president” for the United States and Wyoming, she praised the 76-year-old. He is not a threat to the country.

Polls show that the majority of Republicans do not see the Capitol attack as a threat to democracy. The U-Committee, in which Trump was heavily incriminated by witnesses, did not change that. Not surprisingly, Cheney’s appeals in Wyoming came to nothing – hurt her. Of the 10 Republicans who voted for a second impeachment trial, only two have a chance of moving back into Congress. Everyone else lost in the primaries or won’t run again. Trump’s influence in the party continues to be huge.

Cheney doesn’t give up

Cheney used the evening of her defeat again to issue urgent warnings – not a trace of resignation. “That’s why I’m asking you to join me tonight. (…) Let’s decide that we will stand together – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – against those who want to destroy our republic,” she said on a stage in Jackson , Wyoming. “Freedom must not, cannot and will not die here.” But the survival of democracy is not guaranteed, she warned. It’s up to Trump and his supporters. He celebrated the result on his Truth Social platform. “Liz Cheney should be ashamed,” he wrote. You can now disappear into “political oblivion”.

Is this the political end of a woman who was once considered the “rising star” of her party? Recently, Cheney was often asked if she could imagine running for the 2024 presidential election. “It’s something I’m thinking about, and I’ll make a decision in the coming months,” Cheney told NBC News on Wednesday morning (local time). It remains to be said, however, that it is considered impossible that the Republicans will make her their candidate. At best, she could run as an independent – and in the end she should get votes from Republicans, who vote democratically because of Trump. And thus rather harm the Democrats.

dpa