If you thought Liz Cheney might resign as a result of the Wyoming Republican Party’s censure on Saturday, think again.
As far-fetched as it sounded, FOX News Sunday host Chris Wallace had to ask the question as the party asked her to step down following vote by members to censure the representative. The censure vote stemmed from Cheney’s decision to vote for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
Immediately dismissing the mention of her resignation, she defended the impeachment vote as a result of her loyalty to the Constitution.
“As I’ve explained, and will continue to explain to supporters all across the state and voters all across the state, the oath that I took to the Constitution compelled me to vote for impeachment, and it doesn’t bend to partisanship and it doesn’t bend to political pressure,” Cheney said.
Attendees of the GOP central committee meeting in Rawlins may have hoped their political pressure would have a different outcome as the vote to censure was overwhelming, with only eight of 74 people voting against it.
“We need to honor President Trump. All President Trump did was call for a peaceful assembly and protest for a fair and audited election,” Darin Smith said while explaining the censure vote. “The Republican Party needs to put her on notice.”
State Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne, who announced he is running for Cheney’s seat in 2022, criticized the congresswoman for not attending the meeting and posted an empty chair with her name on it on his Facebook page.
“Maybe Liz should run inside the DC Beltway in (Virginia) where she lives full-time, because she’s never here and has no clue how we think. And doesn’t care. #AWOL,” he said.
The issue of who was responsible for the riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 appears to be one of the disputes between Cheney and the Wyoming Republican Party.
According to the language in the censure, the Party believes “Antifa and BLM radicals” were behind the unrest.
“That’s just simply not the case,” Cheney said. “It’s not true. People have been lied to.”
Same goes for the election, Cheney said, stating that the president lied about the results of the election being “stolen or rigged” for months preceding the Jan. 6 riots.
“We need to make sure that Republicans are the party of truth, and that we’re being honest about what really did happen in 2020. So we actually have a chance to win in 2022 and win the White House back in 2024,” she said.
After easily beating back a challenge to her U.S. House leadership position earlier in the week, the question now is how widespread is voter dissatisfaction with Cheney in Wyoming.
To some like Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, who will face a censure vote on Feb 13, and Dan McLaughlin, a writer at National Review, these universe of those asking for censure is separate from the universe of most voters.
“The common thread in these sorts of censure resolutions is a party establishment that was not elected by the mass of its state’s voters attacking a public official who was,” McLaughlin tweeted on Saturday.
In a video message on Thursday, Sasse said members of Nebraska’s central committee aren’t representative of conservative voters in his state.
“I listen to Nebraskans every day, and very few of them are as angry about life as some of the people on this committee — not all of you, but a lot. Political addicts don’t represent most Nebraska conservatives,” he said.
We really don’t know if there is widespread dissatisfaction with Cheney in Wyoming. There has been no polling that the public has access to.
It might similar to the recent situation in Washington, when a disgruntled group of conservatives said they had the votes to topple Cheney from her leadership post. But when push came to shove, Cheney won by an overwhelming margin.
Or it could be completely different. Wyoming is the reddest state in nation with more than 70% of its voters supporting President Trump last November.
