After losing her primary on Tuesday night in an unsurprising end to her family's political dynasty in Wyoming, Liz Cheney addressed what supporters she had left in the state.
Despite losing to challenger Harriet Hageman, Cheney insisted "our work is far from over," but the work she described had little to do with the people of Wyoming. After recognizing her mom and dad — former Vice President Dick Cheney — Liz Cheney proclaimed the importance of "standing up for truth" and declared politics "is not a game."
Looking to the past, Cheney noted that "two years ago, I won this primary with 73 percent of the vote" before claiming she "could easily have done the same again" in 2022 and her "path was clear" — while trailing her Trump-endorsed challenger by more than a 20 percent margin.
In order to win, Cheney said, she would have had to "go along with Trump's lie about the 2020 election" and be an accomplice in unraveling "our democratic system" while attacking the "foundations of our republic." Careful listeners will note that Cheney attributed none of her loss to her evident failure to listen to or respond to the people of Wyoming she was elected to serve.
In her defeat, Cheney repeated her line from a previous CNN interview that "no house seat, no office in this land is more important" than her "principles" and explained she'd conceded to her Republican opponent and "this primary is over."
"But now the real work begins," Cheney said, because apparently serving as the representative to Congress for all of Wyoming since 2017 wasn't "real work" to her. And then her self-aggrandizement began.
In Cheney's eyes, evidently, she and Abraham Lincoln have a lot in common because... they both lost elections.
"Abraham Lincoln was defeated in elections for the Senate and the House before he won the most important election of all," Cheney explained. "Lincoln ultimately prevailed, he saved our union, and he defined our obligation as Americans for all of history."
Liz Cheney likens herself to Abraham Lincoln because he also lost elections. pic.twitter.com/7kDFiGJmFO
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 17, 2022
Lest there be any questions about how Liz Cheney views herself or what her ambitions are for the future, that's a pretty clear indicator.
Cheney continued by warning that America is "barreling" toward "lawlessness and violence" and our country's "survival is not guaranteed" before getting to something else that has little to do with her role as the House representative for the people of Wyoming: touting her work in the January 6th select committee hearings.
She continued by accusing President Trump and his supporters of responding to the FBI's raid of Mar-a-Lago in a manner that will "provoke violence and threats of violence," adding "it is entirely foreseeable that the violence will escalate further. No patriotic American should excuse these threats or be intimidated by them," Cheney warned.
Again invoking Civil War heroes, Cheney told the story of Union General Ulysses S. Grant turning his horse toward Richmond and the South rather than "turning back toward Washington and safety" in 1864 in another attempt to paint herself as a savior of the country. "Freedom must not, cannot, and will not die here," she promised without any details about how she would ensure freedom's continuation after losing on Tuesday.
"We must be very clear-eyed about the threat we face and what is required to defeat it," Cheney continued while proclaiming herself to be a "conservative" and a "Republican," but one who loves her country more.
Once more painting her opponents and critics as "angry" and "determined," she said "with God's help we will prevail," despite not prevailing in her primary.
Liz Cheney now joins a growing roster of never-Trump Republicans who put their resistance Twitter and liberal media activism ahead of their constituents' priorities and paid for it. Fellow Republican members of Congress who voted for Trump's impeachment Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA), Peter Meijer (MI), and Tom Rice (SC) lost their midterm primaries earlier this year while Reps. Anthony Gonzalez (OH), Adam Kinzinger (IL), John Katko (NY), and Fred Upton (MI) chose not to attempt a run at reelection.
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