They say Cheney’s become a Democrat but she’s turning Democrats into Republicans!
With help from actual Democrats!
I’m … not really seeing how her strategy of hugging Dems is doing her a favor in a state where Trump got 70 percent of the vote but I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures. Cheney initially ruled out appealing to Democrats to re-register on primary day and support her in the Republican primary, telling the NYT in February, “That is not something that I have contemplated, that I have organized or that I will organize.” But she had a change of heart in June for reasons that have never been explained. I find it hard to believe that she ever thought she might beat a Trump-backed challenger in blood red Wyoming without massive Democratic help — or even with massive Democratic help. Maybe she concluded that if she’s destined to lose, she wants to do it with bipartisan support to show that there’s a potential national coalition that will back pro-democracy Republicans over insurrectionists.
If so, this new appeal from Dem Rep. Dean Phillips might move the needle every so slightly by turning out a few extra people in Wyoming. As in, instead of Cheney losing by 50 points, it might persuade enough Wyoming Dems to turn out for her that she’ll lose by only 49.
After escaping the Capitol on Jan 6, a few of us huddled in a safe room, glued to a tv in disbelief. It was there that @Liz_Cheney vowed to hold those responsible to account. Her principles transcend politics, and I’m inviting Wyoming Dem and Ind voters to do the same on 8/16.🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/GfLklIeEpR
— Dean Phillips 🇺🇸 (@deanbphillips) August 8, 2022
His colleague, Rep. Tom Malinowski, also cut an ad for the same pro-Cheney PAC, which you can watch here. (I can’t find an embeddable version.) Phillips is an interesting character in that he’s often outspoken in mavericky ways on matters that are apt to make his party uncomfortable. Remember the news last week about a Democratic House member telling reporters that Biden shouldn’t run again in 2024? That was him. A few days before that, he laid into the DCCC for spending money on ads to promote Peter Meijer’s MAGA opponent in the MI-03 primary. Now here he is encouraging members of his own party to vote for Cheney.
Phillips supporting a Republican would be a big deal if Democrats had nominated a candidate of their own to compete in the Wyoming House race this fall. But they didn’t, realizing that that cause was hopeless and that the best possible realistic outcome for the party in the state was helping the anti-Trump Republican Cheney to victory. In that sense, Phillips’s and Malinowski’s cross-party endorsements are in fact in the Democrats’ interests.
As for Cheney’s interests, this news would be inexplicable *if* her goal were to win her primary. But it isn’t.
A viral ad in which former Vice President Dick Cheney attacks former President Trump as a “coward” will begin airing on Fox News on Tuesday, a week before his daughter Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) faces a Trump-backed primary challenge, Axios has learned.
Driving the news: The ad, which initially aired solely in Wyoming, got so much attention that Cheney’s campaign has decided to take it directly to Trump’s favorite programs. The ad will air twice daily this week during “Fox & Friends” and once daily on Sean Hannity’s prime-time show…
What they’re saying: “It’s important not only for Fox News viewers, but for the network’s hosts and top executives, to hear former Vice President Cheney’s warning about the ongoing danger Donald Trump and his lies pose to our constitutional republic,” Cheney spokesman Jeremy Adler tells Axios.
There’s no reason strategically to air the Darth Cheney ad attacking Trump on national television, let alone on the one network where Wyoming Republicans are most likely to see it and feel pissed off. It’s another example of Cheney being keen to show Trump and his apologists that she’s going down swinging, not laying off of him amid impending defeat to try to save her own skin. “Country over party” necessarily also means “Country over career.”
It’s also another sign that she no longer views her mission in American politics as winning office and advancing a conservative policy agenda. Her mission now is to keep Trump from returning to power. Insofar as the Dick Cheney ad gives a few old Bush/Cheney voters some extra misgivings about Trump, it gets her closer to completing her mission.
Once Cheney is dispatched next Tuesday, just two of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach will still stand a chance of returning to Congress next year, and of those two, only Dan Newhouse of Washington stands a solid chance. The latest impeacher to be vanquished is Jaime Herrera Beutler, also of Washington.
Herrera Beutler is the third pro-impeachment GOP incumbent to lose reelection. Kent, endorsed by Trump, is the clear favorite to win this R+5 seat (@CookPolitical PVI) in the fall.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) August 9, 2022
Between retirements (Kinzinger, Gonzales, Upton, Katko, Jacobs) and primary defeats (McKinley, Davis, Rice, Meijer, Herrera Beutler), we're watching a slow-motion decimation of House GOP Trump skeptics and election certifiers.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) August 9, 2022
Beutler’s defeat hurts, and not just because she was willing to call BS on Trump during his impeachment trial. (She was the one who revealed that when Kevin McCarthy begged Trump for help during the insurrection, Trump allegedly replied, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”) What really hurts is that Joe Kent, who’s likely to replace her in Congress, is unfit for office even by the standards of Trump sycophants. Go read Tim Miller’s take on him from March. With Kent’s entrance and Cheney’s and Beutler’s exits, we’re getting the government we deserve.
