Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney is hardly the only Republican to suffer at the polls for having placed principle over party, but she’s definitely the most high-profile one because of her leadership role on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. In Wyoming’s Republican primary Tuesday, voters decided it was time for Cheney to go. Even before the vote, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was lauding her defeat. This despite a rating by the Conservative Political Action Conference that put her conservative voting record on a par with McCarthy himself.
What are her crimes? Cheney stands convicted of defending democracy. She stands convicted of defending the truth over lies. She stands convicted of prioritizing the Constitution over blind loyalty to former President Donald Trump. For that, Cheney paid the ultimate price of losing her job as Wyoming’s sole House member.
A situation that is appalling in so many ways is perhaps most galling by the way some of her like-minded allies in Congress — including Missouri Rep. Ann Wagner — abandoned her even if they secretly agreed with her principled stand. Their cowardly silence in the wake of the most serious attack on democratic principles since the Civil War should tell non-Trumpian voters everything they need to know about where today’s Republican Party stands.
