I don’t care how conservative she is when it comes to standing up for the Constitution and the rule of law. She has acted honorably and defended the nation at the cost of her seat in congress. That’s not something I’d automatically assume of any Democrats in office. Liz Cheney deserves to be known as a profile in courage.
This is so true and it also points to the terrible dilemma that the GOP has put itself and the U.S. into; if all candidates behaved honourably, would they not be primaried and replaced by the current generation of lunatics?
Cheney confirmed in an interview on “Today” this morning that she is considering a Presidential bid, saying, “It is something I’m thinking about, and I’ll make a decision in the coming months.” She also filed today with the FEC to create a Leadership PAC named “The Great Task.”
If Liz Cheney decides to try to burn down the GOP (which she is positioned to at least make a go of) to save America what her party has become, that would be admirable.
Trying to save the GOP itself - a political party killing us by degrees instead of all at once - from Trump is less admirable. I can’t admire somebody for having the courage of her convictions when her convictions are largely hostile to me and the people I care about. She just happens to be a predictable devil doing battle with an insane one.
Ah, character alignments? There’s a thread for that.
\end hijack
Heh, I was definitely thinking in alignment terms when I was composing that.
If she can get GW Bush to support her and she decides to form a third party then she might have some effect - not in terms of winning the presidency, that’s not likely to happen - but she might get the average Republican to start having a little less confidence in their beliefs.
She isn’t trying to save the Trump GOP. I can’t agree with her trying to save the GOP as she believed is was, because it never was what she thinks it was, at least not based on her political positions. But she wants to play by the rules, within the system of checks and balances. No conviction of hers under those conditions is worse than the attempts to destroy our system of government, which has been the intent of the GOP going as far back as the 1930s, or further. If we can’t respect that loyalty to the constitution and our democratic republic then I don’t think we’d be any better than the Trumpist who don’t respect that either.
In the 1930s, the Democrats were signing this and FDR was setting out to pack the courts and serve as President for life. The closest historical equivalent we have to Trump’s gross attempt to destroy the norms of the US government was FDR and after he was out of office, Congress passed the 22nd Amendment to try and prevent future FDRs (and they should have passed an anti-court packing amendment). To be sure, you might like what FDR wanted to do but…Trump’s followers like what he was trying to do and probably will continue to think that way in 90 years.
Having the “right” ideas is a subjective matter but - whether FDR was acting for the best or not be as it may - how one decides to go about pushing their policies through, though, does matter and should be evaluated independent of the policies themselves.
Who was signing what when? And how was FDR setting himself up to be president for life? And the 22nd amendment was a Republican effort to break the system by denying people their right to vote for the candidate of their choice and making a 2nd term president an automatic lame duck. As for court packing, I don’t like the idea of packing the court, as the Republicans did recently, and the appointment process needs to change.
From your link:
1930’s era Democrats were apparently also Time Lords.
Their TARDIS was not as iconic.
Americans bar for ‘courage’ is something an ant could polevault over.
https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/blog/liz-cheney-defends-torture-same-old-lies
Amen. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.
Accidentally hopped from the Conservative Manifesto (1937) to the Southern one - as doing a better job representing who a significant chunk of Democrats were during the first half the 20th centuries. Sorry about that.
But, certainly, there’s no bonus to having the more racist output be later in time than earlier.
According to Pew, Wyoming is about 57% R, 18% I, and 25% D.
Cheney got about 30% of the vote in the Republican primary so that implies that there’s about 17.1% of the total Wyoming population, on the right, that might choose to not back Hageman or might go to the other side. If they all sit it out then Hageman is at 40% versus a potential 18+25% (43%) and that could be improved by having at least a few switch sides.
If Ms. Grey Bull revises her stance on energy policy, promises to sit out discussions of LGBTQ issues, and maybe throws in a “God” here and there, she could probably win the seat.
Among other things, this analysis doesn’t account for the fact that Wyoming has open primaries and there’s evidence that significant numbers of Democrats and Independents voted in the Republican primary (presumably for her). Without them her margin would have been even worse.
I was skeptical that there were really so many Democrats who moved over but, comparing to the 2020 numbers, it does look like the Democratic primary dropped from 23,576 votes to 7,233 (at current tally - 99% of the vote counted) and the total number of primary votes expanded by almost 47k.
I also notice that, in the 2020 election, the ratio of votes from Republicans to Democrats is like 82% to 18%. From the Pew results, we would expect those numbers to be something closer to 67%/33%. The only way I see to get to such a lopsided result is if both 1) independents largely sit out the primaries, and 2) Grey Bull is not an inspiring candidate.
I would agree that there was a significant switch-over by Democrats, since there’s no other explanation for the drop in votes on the Democratic side. But it’s not clear whether there was greater involvement by independents or if they continued to sit it out.
One thing that we can say is that there are about 280k total votes available in Wyoming. Hageman only received 113k and I suspect that a lot of money was blown on the right, trying to get people to vote in the primaries. If they don’t view Grey Bull as a threat and if Grey Bull is willing to take on a better policy platform, she could swoop in and win.
Here’s CNN’s analysis: