Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney on Tuesday forcefully backed GOP campaign reforms, including voter identification, but ruled out public financing, warning that it means tax dollars would fund all candidates, even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of her top critics.
“What it really means is your tax dollars are going to go to Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Cheney said at a Jackson Hole, Wyoming, event.
“Your tax dollars are going to go to candidates that you … may not support,” she added, according to a report in the Jackson Hole News&Guide.
Cheney and Greene represent two ends of today’s Republican Party and are bitter foes.
Cheney’s vote to impeach former President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots and her participation in the Jan. 6 congressional inquiry prompted condemnation from her state party and Washington Republicans, including Greene.
Greene, who remains close to Trump, called Cheney a “traitor” in a recent tweet.
Cheney in the past week called Greene a “useful idiot” for Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing comments she made about the war in Ukraine.
Polls have shown a challenging primary reelection for Cheney, who has also come under fire from Trump in the very conservative state. Still, she has stuck to her guns. On Tuesday night, Cheney both expressed her support for the constitutional process that led to the Jan. 6 clashes and generally criticized lawmakers she feels do not deserve their posts.
“We are the greatest constitutional Republic that has ever existed, and that imposes a real duty on every one of us,” Cheney said, adding, “We cannot just throw it away because our politics don’t match the outcome of an election. We must not do that.”
In comments her staff highlighted, Cheney urged the audience and nation to elect only serious politicians.
“When you’re casting your vote, when you’re thinking about who to vote for, one of the things that’s most important for us to do is to incentivize serious people. There are a lot of people, too many people, in Congress today, on both sides of the aisle, who are not serious, who don’t do their homework, and who treat politics like it’s a game,” said Cheney.
She also endorsed many election reforms being pushed in states, including voter ID and ending elections on election night.
“Voter ID is really important. I think making sure that we have absentee ballots opened and counted. You know, we need to have an end to the election, and nice to have the end be on Election Day. I think that we also ought to work to clean and clear out voter rolls. You know, that is something that is fundamentally important but becomes a political hot potato. I also think that ballot harvesting is a real problem,” said Cheney.
