This whole Liz Cheney narrative is completely backwards

| 11:00 am EDT August 8, 2022
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When Liz Cheney likely loses her primary race in nine days, we’re going to see a ton of ratings-thirsty media narratives about how she “sacrificed her career” and that her loss is somehow proof that Trump is more omnipotently powerful than ever. It’ll all be complete bullshit.

You can praise Cheney all you like for her honest work on the 1/6 committee. She’s earned it. But she’s clearly doing it to try to chase Trump and his loyalists out of the Republican Party, so she can take it over and become the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 or 2028. And good for her. But she’s not “sacrificing” anything. Nor has Trump defeated her.

Moreover, the 2022 midterm cycle has seen Trump-backed Republican candidates more often lose their primary races than win. Trump is now reduced to stunts like endorsing “Eric” in a race where both Republican candidates were named Eric, so he could try to take credit no matter which of them won. It’s proof that Trump’s influence is fading, even among Republican primary voters.

It’s just that Wyoming is the kind of far right red state where extremism thrives. Liz Cheney is losing there because she dared to take non-extremist, non-deranged positions at all. Whereas Trump’s platform fits far better with Wyoming’s extremism. In other words, if Cheney had simply stayed far right, and emphasized extremist positions instead of bipartisanship, she’d have won reelection – whether Trump was for her or against her.

But while nearly everyone in the political media and pundit industry understands all of the above, none of it makes for a compelling ratings-friendly narrative. So instead we’ll get fed a bunch of high drama nonsense about how Liz Cheney is a martyr and Trump is all powerful.

This doesn’t mean that Liz Cheney’s long term plan will work. The media always insists that someone in politics is holding the magic wand at any given time. But that’s not how anything works. Cheney’s long term strategy may succeed, or may not. But it’s the strategy she’s settled on, and she’s smart, so it’ll have a decent chance of working. And it benefits us, because while Cheney is a far worse person than the past six months have suggested, we’d all rather be dealing with her on her worst day than Trump on his best day. But she’s simply embarking on a long term strategy, not sacrificing herself in any way.