Midterm Memo: Liz Cheney sacrifices herself at the altar of Never Trump

I hear this from Democratic voters, naturally. I hear this from Republicans who oppose Trump — the so-called Never Trump crowd, of course. And I also get this, now and then, from Republicans who have supported Trump in the past, and might in the future, but are exhausted by the political circus that is the former president and wish he would just go away. In this regard, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) offers a window into why so many prominent Republicans have been unwilling to stand up to Trump and vocally denounce his unsupported claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Because, as Cheney discovered Tuesday in losing badly to Trump-endorsed challenger Harriet Hageman in the Republican primary for Wyoming’s at-large House seat, doing so makes GOP voters very angry; they adore the 45th president. If other prominent Republicans followed her lead, many would find themselves out of a job, just like Cheney, a once-rising star inside the party. And that’s the last place any of them want to be, now or in the future. In other words, it’s not Trump who wields the power in this relationship. To borrow a famous phrase: It’s the (GOP) voters, stupid.

None of this seems to have mattered to Cheney, 56, who will end her tenure in Congress after just three terms, barely two years removed from being talked up as the most likely Republican to become the first woman from her party to serve as speaker of the House. If Cheney and her admirers are to be believed, it has long been obvious her dogged pursuit of Trump would end in defeat in the primary. After all, Wyoming twice delivered nearly 70% of its vote to the former president. But she was willing to sacrifice her promising political career for the greater good.

“Shot down in a blaze of glory,” to quote the esteemed New Jersey philosopher Jon Bon Jovi. Here’s how Cheney put it Tuesday evening during a concession speech in Jackson, Wyoming, delivered in the shadow of the majestic Grand Teton mountain range.

“Two years ago, I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would’ve required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic. That was a path I could not and would not take,” Cheney said. “No House seat, no office in this land is more important than the principles that we are all sworn to protect.”

DOWN BUT NOT OUT: HOW LIZ CHENEY PLANS TO BE A THORN IN TRUMP’S SIDE AFTER DEFEAT

Cheney’s critics, among them Republicans who privately share her opinion of Trump, view her predicament from another vantage point. It goes something like this:

The congresswoman was booted from House GOP leadership, in which, as conference chairwoman, she was the No. 3-ranking Republican and was fired by her voters because she became singularly obsessed with the former president in a way that was counterproductive for them and the party. In doing so, Cheney turned into a self-important, self-interested martyr, not all that different from one Donald J. Trump, who lately is sacrificing himself at the altar of an FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, his residence and private social club in Palm Beach, Florida.

“You can despise Trump and have a strong distaste for Cheney and what she’s doing all at the same time. That’s the camp I’m in,” a senior GOP House aide said. “Good riddance.”

There’s another aspect to Hageman’s 66% to 29% walloping of Cheney that bears mentioning. The congresswoman simply did not spend enough time tending to the homefront to accrue enough political capital such that she might have, conceivably, survived an aggressive primary challenge.

Sure, Cheney’s voting record on the House floor was plenty conservative, no matter what her detractors might think. And, yes, Cheney’s last name was beloved in Wyoming: Her father is former Vice President Dick Cheney. He represented Wyoming in the House for a decade back in the 1980s and has always been something of a favorite son in the Cowboy State.

But in part because of Dick Cheney’s years of government service, Liz Cheney spent years elsewhere and was not considered a local. And after winning Wyoming’s at-large House seat in 2016, the same year Trump advanced to the White House, Liz Cheney didn’t compensate by traveling the state and focusing on parochial concerns sufficiently to convince her predominantly Republican electorate that she was truly one of them.

After voting to impeach Trump for his culpability in the Jan. 6, 2021, ransacking of the Capitol by his grassroots supporters and after taking a leading role on the special select committee in the House investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory over him in 2020, Liz Cheney was simply not in a position to absorb the personal and political hits from him that followed.

After the race was called, Trump gloated in typical fashion. “Liz Cheney should be ashamed of herself, the way she acted, and her spiteful, sanctimonious words and actions towards others. Now she can disappear into the depths of political oblivion,” the former president said as part of a post on Truth Social, the Twitter-like social media platform he founded.

Don’t bet on it. Liz Cheney and her team are hard at work on what’s next, which might include a 2024 presidential bid. Now, to the field …

New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District. Earlier this week, the Washington Examiner reported on a new poll showing Matt Mowers with a commanding lead in the Republican primary for the right to take on Rep. Chris Pappas (D) in November.

But there was a second survey released this week that showed a much more competitive race, with Mowers and Karoline Leavitt leading the pack and three candidates trailing far behind, among them Gail Huff Brown, wife of former Massachusetts GOP Sen. Scott Brown. In the poll from Saint Anselm College, Mowers led with 25%, followed closely by Leavitt, who had 21%.

Mowers and Leavitt are both veterans of the Trump administration, and for Mowers, this is his second bid for this seat. He was the GOP nominee there in 2020 but came up short in the general election. Trump has not endorsed in this race.

Pennsylvania Senate race. There’s a new survey in the race for the Keystone State’s open Senate seat from respected GOP polling firm Public Opinion Strategies. And to put it mildly, Republicans are concerned.

The survey shows the Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, with a massive 51% to 33% lead over the Republican nominee, Dr. Mehmet Oz, with 15% undecided. Both candidates have challenges.

Fetterman is recovering from a stroke suffered just before the May 17 primary and has been largely invisible on the campaign trail ever since. Although the lieutenant governor has recently begun to make public appearances, his ability to communicate normally still appears compromised.

Oz has yet to recover from a brutal GOP primary he won only narrowly and seems to be dogged by the fact that he is from New Jersey and still figuring out how to fit in in his adopted home state. (For more on this, Google “Fetterman, Oz” and “crudite.”)

Meanwhile, in the governor’s race, the Democratic nominee, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, was beating the Republican nominee, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, 50% to 35%, with 15% undecided.

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2024 watch. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, up for reelection this fall in the Sunshine State, is busy traversing the campaign trail this month in Arizona, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

DeSantis so far has headlined rallies for Republican gubernatorial and Senate hopefuls Kari Lake and Blake Masters, respectively, in Arizona; he is headed to Ohio to juice support for GOP Senate nominee J.D. Vance and to Pennsylvania to lend a hand to Republican gubernatorial nominee Mastriano’s underdog campaign.

There’s a theme here, and it’s not just that each of these rallies is far from Florida and hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action. Each state DeSantis has or is traveling to is a key White House battleground, and each candidate the governor is backing with his considerable popularity among grassroots conservatives has been endorsed by Trump.

Maybe this has absolutely nothing to do with DeSantis’s presidential ambitions. Maybe.