It might be the worst of both worlds there. I don’t think the GOP voters who stand behind Trump will give their support despite her strong conservative policies, and those same policies would not attract Democratic voters.
I think she might poll well with sane independents who admire how much she stood up against Trump and the Republican Party, and stood up for the US, but that group wouldn’t be enough to elect her.
She could suddenly adopt a liberal platform and try to ride on her Trump criticism, but then she’d be labeled as a flip-flopper (and for good reason) and it would be difficult to trust her. Plus, she just doesn’t come across as a populist, rather the opposite.
I have no illusions about policy or ideology–the Dems would be putting her on their ballot purely as a way of grabbing the seat, fully aware that she will almost never vote with them in Congress. But neither will the person who gets elected on the GOP ticket, so no loss there. And she will continue to oppose Trump, and to serve on the J6 committee if the Dems hold on to the house, which would be her main contribution to running as a Dem. I’m just curious if what I’m speculating on makes sense: do the number of Wyoming Dems + the number of Wyoming GOPers supporting Cheney add up to anything close to 50 % of the vote? Even if it’s only close to 50%, I’m sure she and the Dems would enjoy seeing the GOP waste resources trying to vote her out.
I would say that might be worth pursuing, except I believe most states have rules against running as one party when you have been on a ballot for a different party within the last year. I seem to recall that some Democratic candidate was removed – or barred from being on a ballot for just that reason.
I believe the reason for this rule is to keep someone who lost a narrow primary from running as an Independent and spoiling the race.
Wyoming does indeed have a sore loser law that would prevent her from appearing on the ballot in the general election if she loses the Republican nomination:
According to the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office, there are 196,000 registered Republicans compared to 46,000 registered Democrats in Wyoming. There was an open-seat election for one of Wyoming’s two Senate seats in 2020, and the Republican won by 46 percentage points.
There’s just no plausible coalition of Democrats and disaffected Republicans that could elected Cheney. But Senator John Barrasso is up in 2024, she’s welcome to try.
If those are the numbers, you’re right. But I suspect that Dems usually lose the WY senate seat by more like 40 points than 50, and that Cheney could get inside of 20 points. Her losing 60-40 seems easily doable, and maybe better. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she could make it 55-45 if she campaigned hard and if everything broke her way, which means the GOP would have to take that seat seriously. I think she’d enjoy the fight.
I wouldn’t suggest her running as a Democrat. It’s far easier to get red diehards to vote for an Independent. And in doing that, she doesn’t actually have to win. She just needs to show that she will make the Republican lose.
Al Franken just Tweeted: " I’ve decided to endorse Rep Liz Cheney for the Republican nomination for the House seat In Wyoming it’s my first time endorsing in a GOP primary. But I think Al Franken’s support will carry a lot of weight with WY Republicans."
I want Liz Cheney to have a future in electoral politics as much as anyone, but the Wyoming party affiliation stats show that Republican outnumber not only Democrats, but all other parties AND unaffiliated voters combined by a ratio of more than 2:1. [Cite]
There’s just no way she’s a viable candidate for statewide office in Wyoming, even as a spoiler. I don’t know Liz Cheney, obviously, but she’s 56 years old and I have to assume that she wants to spend her prime earning years doing something productive rather than wasting them on a hopeless campaign.
Well, this may be a bit of hijack, but still relevant here: I think in Utah, last I heard, another red state, the Dems were not contesting the state by putting up a candidate but allowing Evan McMullen to run as an Independent vs. the GOP candidate. They could try something similar with Cheney here.
Her political career will end tomorrow. She’ll of course be a lame duck member of the J6 committee and may yet get to savor the final humiliation of DJT but she will never be elected to anything in Wyoming again. I don’t see her a lobbyist since she will have few ties to the next Congress to exploit for any client. Her future lies in being a talking head on a news network, certainly not Fox but I’m sure CNN would let her sit on some panel discussions from time to time.
I guess it depends what the future of the Republican party is.
She can never return to the MAGA party (despite actually having one of the most conservative voting records of any republican).
But I don’t see MAGA as a stable political party. It will fracture into multiple parties, or fall apart entirely, or cause the whole country to fall apart entirely.
And there’s a path back to mainstream politics in all 3 scenarios (fingers crossed it’s not the dystopian third scenario).
If I had to guess, I’d say her best path would be to run for POTUS in 2024 as an Independent IF the GOP nominates Trump or someone Trump-adjacent, as seems likely. This would draw crucial votes away from the GOP ticket in a few Red states, giving the Dems room enough to win a plurality. I don’t think she would draw many Dem votes per se away from Biden (or other Dem candidates.)
That’s not entirely unexpected. Any Republican who stands up against The Big Lie, and especially anyone who says that Trump was responsible for January 6, is liable to get creamed. The inmates are running the asylum. The Republicans don’t even resemble a functioning party anymore.
