“I’m going to make sure Donald Trump, make sure he’s not the nominee … And if he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican.”
Let’s ponder for a moment who made that statement.
It comes from Liz Cheney, the senior Republican on the House select 1/6 committee. She has been a Republican her entire adult life. Her dad is former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, a Republican’s Republican if ever there was one.
She has declared at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin that if Donald J. Trump is the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, she will cease belonging to the party to which she has devoted her entire public life.
In one way that stuns me, given what I know about Cheney’s GOP credentials. In another way, I shouldn’t be surprised.
Wyoming voters cast her aside in August’s GOP primary. She sought another term as Wyoming’s lone member of the U.S. House. GOP primary voters said, in effect, forget about it, Liz; we don’t want you in the party. We censured you because you aren’t loyal to Trump.
According to the Texas Tribune: Cheney maintained that she is an ardent conservative on policy issues, voting in near lockstep with Trump’s legislative agenda when he was in office. But she warned a House Republican majority would give outsized power to members who have been staunch allies of the former president and his efforts to keep the White House, including U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Jim Jordan.
And she is all of that. Cheney also believes in the rule of law, in the oath she and Trump both took to “defend and protect” the Constitution.
Frankly — despite the fact that she represents an ideology that I dislike and my belief that Trump won’t be nominated in 2024 — I happen to be proud of Rep. Liz Cheney for standing firm on behalf of the truth.