At a rally in May of this year in the western state of Wyoming, former President Donald Trump recommended to his supporters: “You’re going to say to Liz Cheney, ‘Liz, you’re fired, get out of here,'” echoing the catchphrase that made him famous as the host of the American version of the show “The Apprentice”.
Voters obeyed. On Tuesday night (16), Cheney, a Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, lost the primary of the party that decided who will run for the party in the November legislative election, in one of the most peculiar primaries of the midterms (midterm elections).
The election draws attention to the dedication that Trump and his supporters dedicated to removing one of the most conservative deputies from the House, who was consistent with the former president’s agenda in 93% of votes on projects discussed in the House, according to a follow-up by the American press.
Elected for the first time on the same night that Trump was chosen US president, in November 2016, the deputy had her political life turned upside down since the politician began to question, based on lies, the outcome of the election that lost to Biden in 2020.
Still in the Republican government, Liz Cheney was re-elected twice (in 2018 and 2020) and saw her name being quoted for the presidency of the House and even as an eventual candidate for the White House in the future. At the end of the Trump administration, however, she was one of the ten names of the party in the House to vote in favor of the impeachment of the then president days after the Capitol invasion – he was eventually acquitted in the Senate. She later became vice-president of the commission investigating the episode, considered the most serious attack on democracy in the country’s recent history.
With the move, the deputy saw her political future go down the drain when the former president himself and his supporters entered the campaign to avoid his re-election – buried this Tuesday, according to American media projections.
“The false narrative that Liz Cheney is promoting has been the radical left’s pretext for its all-out war on free speech: the January 6 persecution of political prisoners,” Trump said in his May speech in the town of Casper.
Since the beginning of the investigation against the former president, Cheney has been escorted after receiving a series of death threats.
Trump supported the winner of the election, Harriet Hageman, who from the beginning of the polls appeared with a wide advantage. Interestingly, Hageman was a vocal critic of Trump in the 2016 primaries, when she supported Senator Ted Cruz as a candidate for the White House. At the time, she also supported Cheney for the House, whom he called in public speeches a friend.
The most unusual move in these caucuses, however, was the volume of Democrats — including a former governor, Mike Sullivan — who signed up for the GOP to apparently vote for Cheney, relying on his criticism of Trump. From January to August, the number of Democratic Party members dropped by 6,000 in the state, while the number of Republicans grew by 11,495.
The figure may seem small, but it has some expression in Wyoming, the least populous state in the US, with about 579,000 inhabitants spread over an area larger than the United Kingdom (which has 67 million inhabitants).
It is also noteworthy that Democrats have changed parties to vote for a candidate with positions so diametrically opposed to the party’s flags, as in the case of abortion rights. “I have always been strongly pro-life,” she wrote on Twitter when the Supreme Court changed its mind to say that termination of pregnancy was not a federal right guaranteed by the Constitution.
“I didn’t vote for her for the policies she advocates; it’s literally a vote to save the Republic,” Pat Lauber, who joined the Republican Party after 40 years as a Democrat, told CNN. “I see her as a person of courage and integrity.”
Wyoming is perhaps the most Republican state in the US, where Trump had the biggest lead over Biden in 2020, with 69.9% of the vote – the state has not elected Democrats to federal posts since 1976, even though it did elect a party governor at the beginning. of the 2000s. The population of the country’s largest coal producer and one of the main producers of natural gas and oil is particularly suspicious of the environmental agendas of Biden’s party.
The candidate defeated on Tuesday carries a strong surname. His father, Dick Cheney, was Secretary of Defense to George HW Bush (father) and vice president to George W. Bush (son), described as the most powerful man in office known to exist — lived in the cinema in the award-winning ” Vice”, 2018, by Christian Bale.
Dick entered the game to defend his daughter in campaigns led by the former president. In a TV ad, the former vice president called Trump a coward.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to stay in power after voters rejected him,” he said. . “A real man would not lie to his supporters.”
It was not enough to save her daughter from the great influence that Trump still holds over part of the party. “No job is more important than the principles we are all sworn to uphold. The primary is over, but now the real work begins,” Cheney said in a speech Tuesday night acknowledging defeat.
Of the 10 Republican congressmen who voted to impeach the Republican, eight will be out of the November election: four retired and four lost the primaries, including Cheney. The November ballots should only be David Valadão, from California, and Dan Newhouse, from Washington.
