Liz Cheney Is No American Hero

By Hunter DeRensis, Responsible Statecraft

Like the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, yesterday the Republican voters of Wyoming deposed the Cheney family from political power.

Incumbent Rep. Liz Cheney, sitting in the seat her father held for the whole of the 1980s, was denied renomination for a fourth term in the U.S. House of Representatives. She was defeated by Harriet Hageman, a former friend and supporter turned enemy and opponent, by a titanic two-to-one margin.

While this loss comes as no surprise to sober observers — Cheney had been trailing by double digits in polls for weeks — it does pour cold water on the media’s attempted rehabilitation of the Cheney legacy. It was less than two years ago when Politico, days before the 2020 election, published a fawning profile of Cheney and uplifted her aspirations as the future Speaker of the House in a post-Donald Trump GOP.

“Why aren’t there more Republicans like Liz Cheney,” complains Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who says Cheney “effectively combines a grasp of the facts, understanding of the law and firm moral conviction.” NPR’s Tamara Keith says Cheney made “a calculation that standing up for the Constitution was more important to her than her congressional seat…”