Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz is a US congresssanimal from Wyoming, a position she has held since 2017.
While consistently ranked as one of the most conservative members of congress, she committed what has been for the last few years the cardinal sin of Republican politics - she went against Donald Trump. Even voting for his impeachment, at least the second time. She was stripped of her house leadership position as punishment (the first attempt failed, but the second attempt succeeded).
Liz Cheney has little to fear from Democrats seeking her seat - she has defeated them three times by very comfortable margins in the general elections. However, her big problem now is the pro-Trump Republican running against her in the party election, which is next Tuesday. Some Democrats are calling on members of their party to vote in the Republican primary instead, and to choose Liz Cheney, an individual who voted with Trump’s position more than 90% of the time, supports the use of waterboarding, and declined to speak against Obama “birther” conspiracy theories when they came up in an interview. We live in interesting times.
Anyway, Liz’s father, an eight-year vice-President who is generally regarded as an arch-conservative, and who left office with a 13% approval rating (but note - that is a national rating, not a Wyoming rating), has been trying to help his daughter out in her re-election bid. Recent statements by Dick Cheney have referred to Trump as a “coward”, and mentioned that no one is a “greater threat to our republic”.
I wonder what happens when two icons of the non-moderate wing of the Republican Party get at each other like this. Will it erode support for Trump, or will the non-moderates start to deride Dick Cheney as a liberal, a socialist, and a democrat in disguise?