There likely will be no clearer referendum on the health and status of today’s Republican Party than a primary vote set to take place next month in Wyoming.
U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, the state’s lone representative in the House, is running for re-election. She has been as staunch a conservative lawmaker as any in the House. She is fervently pro-life and pro-gun; she is anti-tax and has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
But she’s being called a “dead woman walking” in the upcoming GOP primary because she is being challenged by a Trump cultist who has earned the endorsement of the twice-impeached former president.
Why worry about this election? Because Cheney has committed an unpardonable sin in the eyes of the cult cabal that follows Donald Trump. She has joined a select House committee seeking to know the truth behind the 1/6 insurrection and attack on the Capitol. She has said Trump is criminally liable for what occurred that day. She has been faithful to her oath, which she took to defend the Constitution.
That has earned her a spot on the Donald Trump sh** list of politicians who would dare to challenge him for, oh, breaking the law and doing something no other president in history has ever done … which is launch a coordinated attack on the peaceful transition of power after an election that he lost.
If the Wyoming primary voters oust Cheney, then I am certain it will signal the death of the Republican Party as we have known it. If Cheney fends off the challenger, which appears unlikely, then there might be hope that the GOP can cleanse itself of the soiling that Trump has brought to it.
I am pulling for Rep. Cheney. Not because I like her politics, but because the Republican Party needs someone in its ranks who will stand for the rule of law. It is fundamental to the success of this democratic experiment the nation’s founders left us.