NBC's Chuck Todd had quite the post out on Wednesday ahead of the Iowa Republican Caucus for Monday. "How to pick the battle against Trump," the headline reads, just days away from a contest in which former and potentially future President Donald Trump is up by an average of +35.2 in the polls. The piece gets even crazier from there, though, given that his subheadline focuses on former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) as the solution. "Analysis: Former Rep. Liz Cheney could play a pivotal role in the 2024 election battle against Donald Trump. But it depends on the path she chooses to take," it reads.
Cheney is indeed a former congresswoman, having lost her primary to now Rep. Harriet Hageman by nearly 40 points in August 2022. She's only gotten more hyperbolic in her criticisms against Trump, especially as she has a book to promote.
The entire basis of the piece is rather nonsensical. "It’s the last week before the official start of the 2024 primary season — and if you’re wondering what happened to the debate about the future of the Republican Party, you aren’t alone," Chuck started off his piece by mentioning. Actually, given Trump's lead in the polls, that isn't really the case, especially if such a lead holds.
Todd continues to go with such an angle:
But from a historical perspective, this lack of focus on Trump — and the future of the party and the nation that Trump promises — is head-scratching. In 50 years, when historians look back at this campaign, they will no doubt examine it through the prism of whether the GOP wanted Trump or a new direction. But that’s not the campaign that’s actually taking place.
There isn’t much of a debate about the direction of the GOP. While I have no doubt that both Haley and DeSantis believe the GOP under Trump is headed in a terrible direction, neither appears to have the guts to say that.
Again, it would appear that the GOP does not want a new direction, not if Trump's nominated once again. Another candidate could pull off the nomination, and then we'd have a different answer. What's to "examine?"
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Todd engages in some commentary against former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, even claiming to speak for them as well. In doing so, he undermines how Haley and DeSantis have to appeal to Trump voters to take support away from the former president, or if either one of them were to end up the nominee instead, he also goes on to insult the entire GOP base. What acknowledgment there is focuses on a "misinformation ecosystem." After the insults, Todd acknowledges it's certain that Trump will win, and goes on to offer that Haley and DeSantis might either not have a future in the party, or will look to have Trump's blessing in 2028:
What’s plainly obvious is that neither the former U.N. ambassador nor the Florida governor has the guts to say Trump’s first term and his leadership were failures. DeSantis has nibbled around the edges of this argument by noting his own success leading the Florida GOP compared to the disastrous electoral record Trump racked up as leader of the national GOP. But even that hit by DeSantis is, at best, a bank-shot attack.
Of course, any Trump opponent inside the GOP has to contend with the misinformation ecosystem Trump and his cronies have so successfully built. The reality of Trump’s term has been memory-holed fairly effectively among the GOP electorate.
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Sadly, it takes political humiliation before many politicians will speak truth to power (see Christie, Chris). I imagine both Haley and DeSantis will have even more to say about Trump and Trumpism after they lose this campaign to him. That is, if they determine that they have no futures in a Trump-led GOP. One gets the sense that both of them hold the delusion that, somehow, they can navigate this moment and get back into the Trump camp enough to be positioned as an heir-apparent in 2028.
Todd even goes for an acknowledgment of former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. "To be fair, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is still actively running, is the only candidate who has fused an anti-Trump character message with an anti-Trumpism message attempting to remind Republicans what the definition of conservatism was for true Reagan acolytes. Now, his message has fallen completely flat. But when the historians get their hands on this election in 50 years, they will find one example of a Republican fighting for a different conservative construct," he offers. To be fair, Todd appears to have an interesting definition of "actively running."
With this in mind, then, it's no wonder that Todd would be so supportive of Liz Cheney.
Todd also references comments that Cheney made to NPR about defeating Trump and how it's "going to take time" to either build a new party or rebuild the GOP. "That’s not something that can happen before the 2024 election. And frankly, I worry that if we focus too much on that, we will take our eye off the ball of the defeat of Donald Trump in '24," she mentioned.
Todd certainly had some thoughts about that:
I get her pragmatism and understand her rationale. But I wonder whether this is a time to attempt to walk and chew gum at the same time. There’s no doubt that the single most credible person on this issue of the future of the GOP is Cheney. She went after Trump from a position of strength inside the party, not weakness — unlike Christie, for instance. She could easily have prioritized her own political future but didn’t. She put her safe House seat on the line to stand up to Trump.
She doesn’t appear to be focused solely on getting to the presidency, and that alone might give her more credibility to be the spokesperson for the future conservative movement, one grounded in truth. And there are quite a few voters who would be more comfortable voting Republican who simply can’t stand Trump. Cheney has to find a way to connect and lead this part of the electorate if she hopes to accomplish her near-term goal of denying Trump the keys to the presidency.
He saves what may be his most laughable claims for the end of the section though, as he considers Cheney to be someone who can use her "considerable influence to challenge Trump."
Todd really seems to believe what he's saying here, in a way that tries to guilt readers into agreeing with him:
How Cheney uses her considerable influence to challenge Trump the individual and Trumpism the idea will be a huge factor in whether Biden gets a second term. She’s the best advocate on the right against Trump, but she can’t become former Ohio Gov. John Kasich and go from being a Republican in good standing to a speaker at the Democratic convention. The more she looks like a Democratic surrogate, the less influential she would be with the very voters she wants to rally to stop Trump.
By the fall, Cheney still has to seen as a believable advocate for a new conservative movement rooted in the traditions of American democracy if she wants to convince these voters that a vote for Biden is a vote for a chance to remake the right without Donald Trump.
It’s not an easy assignment, but she seems as prepared for the task as anyone actually running for president at the moment. And if you care about a healthy American democracy, you should care about the development of a healthy conservative movement just as much as you may care about a healthy liberal or progressive movement.
Despite the headline not mentioning Cheney, she is very much the focus of how Todd looked to promote the piece. The post he shared over his X account mentions Cheney and the featured image is of the former congresswoman. The post received considerable attention, as our sister site of Twitchy highlighted, with close to 800 replies pointing out how laughable it is to categorize Cheney as an "anti-Trump conservative" who has "credibility with the right."
Any "credibility" that Todd himself may have thought he had, especially with Republican voters, looks to be in great peril here after he put out such a joke of a post.
What role should/could Liz Cheney play in 2024? Candidate? New Party founder? No other anti-Trump conservative has more credibility with the right, how does she use her influence to both stop Trump and fix the GOP? https://t.co/pjk9exQ4mb
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) January 10, 2024
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