The Republican National Committee’s decision to censure U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney last week represented the level of national dissatisfaction with her, according to a statement from the Wyoming Republican Party.
Wyoming GOP officials said they wanted to set the record straight regarding the censure, and even pointed to “misinformation” being spread by news outlets including The Washington Post and WyoFile.
“Dissatisfaction with Rep. Cheney is well known and widely felt in Wyoming,” the party’s statement said. “What’s less understood is this same dissatisfaction is a nationwide response. We’re repeatedly told in messages from Republicans around the nation that Cheney’s influential positions in powerful committees and commissions and her relentless pull away from everything Trump, including long-standing Republican values and policies, is affecting all Republicans.”
Last week, Republican National Committee members overwhelmingly voted to censure both Cheney and U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger for their work on the committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Wyoming GOP officials argued that the RNC was driven by what it saw as Cheney being “intent on advancing a political agenda to buoy the Democrat Party’s bleak prospects in the upcoming midterm elections.”
They also claimed that Cheney has been fashioning herself as the leader of a new Republican Party for years, pointing to a “Today Show” interview she gave in May 2021 where she said she wanted to be a leader in the fight to restore the party.
“That ‘dangerous effort’ she refers to is the push back by Republicans, like those in Wyoming and the RNC, who recognize that the foundation and basis of their party’s very being is the maintenance of our representative constitutional republic. We are NOT a democracy,” the Wyoming GOP officials said.
During the meeting in Utah last week that saw the RNC adopt the censure, the committee also passed a resolution recognizing congressional candidate Harriet Hageman as the party’s presumptive nominee for Wyoming’s lone U.S. House seat.
Several media outlets suggested the resolution could allow the RNC to donate money to Hageman’s primary campaign, a violation of Wyoming election law barring donations from political parties in a primary race.
But the Wyoming Republican Party’s officials said neither they nor the RNC had any intention of donating to anyone’s campaign during the primary.
“Wyoming’s RNC members, and our state central committee members fully understand that the Wyoming Republican Party cannot expend funds on a candidate prior to the primary,” the statement said. “(Wyoming law) prohibiting those contributions has not been violated.”
Wyoming GOP Executive Director Kathy Russell did not immediately respond to Cowboy State Daily’s request for comment on Thursday.
