Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming might be popular with members of Washington, D.C.’s elite class after she’s attacked former President Donald Trump in recent months, but it doesn’t look like that popularity matters where it counts: with her own voters.
In the weeks since Cheney voted with Democrats and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to impeach former President Donald Trump, her popularity has waned and she’s now attracted at least two serious primary challengers. One of those challengers, Wyoming state Rep Chuck Gray, recently told Just The News that it’s time for his state’s voters to “Get rid of Liz Cheney” over her betrayal of voters and of the former president.
“It is abundantly clear to those of us who actually live in Wyoming that Liz Cheney views her positions as nothing more than a stepping stone, and we’re just supposed to go along with it. Well, not anymore. Wyoming agrees with President Trump … it is time to get rid of Liz Cheney,” Gray said in a statement to Just The News.
“My proven record of leadership for the people of Wyoming is the polar opposite of hers, and it is why I am proud to announce my intent to seek the Republican Party’s nomination to serve the citizens of Wyoming in the United States House of Representatives,” he added.
Gray also issued a blistering attack ad that put Cheney on notice.
It's time for a leader who actually listens to the hard-working people of Wyoming, and not to the D.C elitists. Join me on my journey as I seek the Republican nomination for the United States Congress. pic.twitter.com/ltdYU4DmRS
— Chuck Gray (@ChuckForWyoming) March 4, 2021
Gray now joins Wyoming state Sen. Anthony Bouchard has having launched a primary bid for 2022. Bouchard, according to Newsweek, recently wrote in a campaign email: “Our country is on the line. Weak-kneed Deep-state ‘Republicans’ like Liz Cheney and her fellow pro-impeachment pal Mitt Romney won’t save this country.”
The Casper Star-Tribune reported that Trump pollster John McLaughlin found Cheney down by a huge deficit to Bouchard, 54-21, in an early poll for 2022. When you put all of this together, it’s apparent Cheney is in big trouble with her voters after the state’s GOP already censure her.
Trump is a standalone issue in Wyoming, and Cheney is on the wrong side of that issue — at least according to journalist Bill Sniffin with the Cowboy State Daily. Sniffin opined on Thursday that the state’s lone House representative is in big trouble after taking on the former president and losing big.
“If you had asked me three weeks ago if U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney was beatable in her quest for reelection in 2022, I would have said ‘no way,’” wrote Sniffin. “Today, the landscape has shifted. Former President Donald Trump has retaken charge of the national Republican Party. He did that at the big CPAC meeting Sunday.”
The reporter noted that Trump’s punch labeling Cheney as a “war-monger” landed, and that “he is coming for her.” Sniffin concluded that those involved in state politics expect more challengers to Cheney, but Trump holds the keys to flipping her seat by deciding which one to endorse.
Trump defeated Biden 69.9 percent to 26.6 percent in Wyoming on Nov. 3, which, according to The New York Times, was Trump’s largest margin of victory anywhere in the 2020 election.
Suffice to say Trump is very popular in the Cowboy State while Cheney, the number three Republican in the House and the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is increasingly being viewed as part of a past the state’s conservative voters want to leave behind.
You can tell a lot about a person by who their friends are:
Ex-House Speaker Paul Ryan hosting fundraiser for Rep. Liz Cheney https://t.co/OhotYkA3Rd
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) March 5, 2021
Despite serving only her third two-year term in the House, it feels like Cheney has been in Washington forever. She’s at least been there long enough to make all the right friends at the establishment uni-party table. But that could spell doom for the prospects of what many viewed Cheney’s career as just a few years ago, which was the continuation of a budding political dynasty.
Cheney’s father of course served for eight years as the country’s vice president under the second Bush administration and was well known — and well liked — in D.C. for years prior to that. The former VP held the seat in congress his daughter now holds from 1979 until he became the country’s Secretary of Defense in 1989.
Before serving in the House, Dick Cheney was President Gerald Ford’s White House chief of staff. Liz Cheney grew up around all of that, and seemed destined to pick up where her father left off as a prominent figure in GOP politics.
But while that pedigree might have once made her a more appealing candidate, it seems now that it’s symbolic of a problem: Cheney is out of touch and part of the past. She had one test to pass with voters’ and that was to stand with Trump when he and embattled conservatives needed her. She failed that test miserably by standing in the swamp.
Republican Party politics are trending toward leaving the Cheneys and their kind of politics behind — not only in Wyoming, but everywhere not called Washington, D.C.
That’s where Cheney really lives and its interests are what she really represents, at least if you ask Trump, Bouchard, Gray or the others who are sure to emerge this year to challenge her.
via westernjournal