Liz Cheney floats third-party run
Former Rep. Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, has made a splash on her book tour (“Oath and Honor”) in a series of interviews. She pulls no punches about the depths of Republican Party degradation she witnessed before her ouster from Congress after voting for Trump’s Jan. 6 impeachment. She is determined to do “whatever it takes” to prevent a second Trump term, including a third-party run for president (Washington Post):
“Several years ago, I would not have contemplated a third-party run,” Cheney said in a Monday interview with The Washington Post. But, she said, “I happen to think democracy is at risk at home, obviously, as a result of Donald Trump’s continued grip on the Republican Party, and I think democracy is at risk internationally as well.”
Given her appeal to independents, former Republicans and some Democrats, many Trump critics in both parties have noted that a presidential run by Cheney could undercut her stated goal of defeating Trump, because it could draw some votes away from President Biden. Cheney said those considerations would all be part of her analysis, and underscored that she would not do anything that would help Trump return to the White House.
A third-party run would be a daunting task, the Post offers. Such “candidates must either attach themselves to third parties that have ballot access or petition for their own place on state ballots.” Whatever it takes?
I have mixed feelings. Giving remaining non-MAGA Republicans and independents a face-saving way to vote against Trump could shave enough votes from the dictator-in-waiting to deprive him of electoral votes in one or two swing states. In North Carolina at least, independents (UNAffiliateds) voted statewide 58% against Joe Biden. A sliver of those might welcome a way to vote for a Republican who’s not Trump rather than for a Democrat, something Cheney herself has not ruled out. It is hard to see how she would draw votes away from Biden.
Nevertheless, conventional wisdom is out the door, Cheney believes.
At a moment when Trump is leading his GOP rivals by more than 40 points in many polls of the Republican race, she contends that not just the Republican primary electorate but the party itself has “lost its way,” caught in the grip of what she calls the “cult of personality.”
Because of that, the “tectonic plates of our politics are shifting,” she said, and conventional wisdom about third parties and the bifurcated primary process that produces a Republican nominee and a Democratic nominee is “pretty irrelevant, in my view, in the 2024 cycle, because the threat is so unique.”
Arrested development has no vaccine, and it’s infected Cheney’s entire party.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio urged her to join the House Freedom Arrested Development Caucus because “we don’t have any women and we need one.” He may need a criminal defense lawyer, she suggests.
Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania was so angry at Cheney for releasing a statement before the impeachment vote, he told her in a caucus meeting (CNN):
“It’s like you’re playing in the biggest game of your life and you look up and see your girlfriend sitting on the opponent’s side!”
The remark provoked a chorus of female members who yelled back, “She’s not your girlfriend!”
Arrested development, indeed.