By STEVE PEOPLES and MEAD GRUVER
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney was more and more open on Wednesday about contemplating a 2024 presidential marketing campaign after soundly dropping a Republican major to a challenger backed by former President Donald Trump.
Speaking to NBC within the wake of her loss, the third-term congresswoman referred to as Trump “a very grave threat and risk to our republic,” and mentioned defeating him would require “a broad and united front of Republicans, Democrats and independents — and that’s what I intend to be part of.”
She declined to say if she would run for president however conceded it’s “something that I’m thinking about.”
The major outcomes — and the greater than 35-point margin of her defeat — have been a robust reminder of the GOP’s speedy shift to the fitting. A celebration as soon as dominated by nationwide security-oriented, business-friendly conservatives like her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, now belongs to Trump, animated by his populist attraction and, above all, his denial of defeat within the 2020 election.
Such lies, which have been roundly rejected by federal and state election officers together with Trump’s personal lawyer basic and judges he appointed, remodeled Cheney from an occasional critic of the previous president to the clearest voice contained in the GOP warning that he represents a menace to democratic norms. She’s the highest Republican on the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, an assault she referenced in nodding to her political future.
“I have said since Jan. 6 that I will do whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office — and I mean it,” she mentioned throughout her concession speech on Tuesday.
Cheney described her major loss on Tuesday evening as the start of a brand new chapter in her political profession as she addressed a small assortment of supporters, together with her father, on the sting of an unlimited subject flanked by mountains and bales of hay.
“Our work is far from over,” she mentioned, evoking Abraham Lincoln, who additionally misplaced congressional elections earlier than ascending to the presidency and preserving the union.
Four hundred miles (645 kilometers) to the east of Cheney’s concession speech, festive Hageman supporters gathered at a sprawling out of doors rodeo and Western tradition competition in Cheyenne, many carrying cowboy boots, hats and blue denims.
“Obviously we’re all very grateful to President Trump, who recognizes that Wyoming has only one congressional representative and we have to make it count,” mentioned Hageman, a ranching trade lawyer who had completed third in a earlier bid for governor.
Echoing Trump’s conspiracy theories, she falsely claimed the 2020 election was “rigged” as she courted his loyalists within the runup to the election.
Trump and his crew celebrated Cheney’s loss, which can symbolize his greatest political victory in a major season stuffed with them. The former president referred to as the outcomes “a complete rebuke” of the Jan. 6 committee.
“Liz Cheney should be ashamed of herself, the way she acted, and her spiteful, sanctimonious words and actions towards others,” he wrote on his social media platform. “Now she can finally disappear into the depths of political oblivion where, I am sure, she will be much happier than she is right now. Thank you WYOMING!”
The information supplied a welcome break from Trump’s give attention to his rising authorized entanglements. Just eight days earlier, federal brokers executing a search warrant recovered 11 units of labeled information from the previous president’s Florida property.
Meanwhile in Alaska, which additionally held elections on Tuesday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one other distinguished GOP critic of Trump, superior from her major. Sarah Palin, the GOP’s 2008 vice presidential nominee and a staunch ally of Trump, was additionally certain for the November basic election within the race for Alaska’s sole U.S. House seat.
But a lot of the consideration was on Cheney, whose defeat would have been unthinkable simply two years in the past. The daughter of a former vice chairman, she hails from one of the vital distinguished political households in Wyoming. And in Washington, she was the No. 3 House Republican, an influential voice in GOP politics and coverage with a sterling conservative voting report.
Cheney will now be compelled from Congress on the finish of her third and remaining time period in January. She shouldn’t be anticipated to depart Capitol Hill quietly.
She will proceed in her management function on the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 assault till it dissolves on the finish of the 12 months. And she is actively contemplating a 2024 White House bid — as a Republican or impartial — having vowed to do all the pieces in her energy to combat Trump’s affect in her social gathering.
With Cheney’s loss, Republicans who voted to question Trump are going extinct.
In all, seven Republican senators and 10 Republican House members backed Trump’s impeachment within the days after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress tried to certify President Joe Biden’s victory. Just two of these 10 House members have gained their primaries this 12 months. After two Senate retirements, Murkowski is the one such Senate Republican on this 12 months’s poll.
Cheney was compelled to hunt help from the state’s tiny Democratic minority in her bid to tug off a victory. But Democrats throughout America, main donors amongst them, took discover. She raised at the very least $15 million for her election, a shocking determine for a Wyoming political contest.
Voters responded to the curiosity within the race. With a little bit greater than half of the vote counted, turnout ran about 50% greater than within the 2018 Republican major for governor.
If Cheney does finally run for president — both as a Republican or an impartial — don’t count on her to win Wyoming’s three electoral votes.
“We like Trump. She tried to impeach Trump,” Cheyenne voter Chester Barkell mentioned of Cheney on Tuesday. “I don’t trust Liz Cheney.”
And in Jackson, Republican voter Dan Winder mentioned he felt betrayed by his congresswoman.
“Over 70% of the state of Wyoming voted Republican in the last presidential election and she turned right around and voted against us,” mentioned Winder, a resort supervisor. “She was our representative, not her own.”
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Peoples reported from New York. AP writers Thomas Peipert in Cheyenne and Jill Colvin in new York contributed.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”