Liz Cheney defeated in Wyoming primary

Okay, it’s scary that Trumpian delusion is still so sttrong out there, but surely we should also keep in mind the good thing that is growing division among Republicans.

tail serpent GIF

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downloadMG

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That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that the party has almost completely purged anyone standing in the way of its “party of Trump” agenda.

This is basically a Night of the Long Knives moment for the party.

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Has it?

I’m blurry at the moment on things nationally, but surely more moderate Republicans are winning voter approval in some places. I wonder about Kinzinger’s popularity in his district (but unfortunately, don’t have time to look it up right now :grimacing:). The surprising Kansas vote on abortion suggests that some pools of conservative voters don’t go for at least some forms of extremism.

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Kinzinger’s district is going away. He has nothing to lose.

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12 posts were split to a new topic: Term Limits for US Congress?

Could be? But from where I’m sitting it feels like the “Never Trump” wing of the party is all but extinct.

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Confirmed by the silence of ALL others in the gQp.

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One datapoint: of the 10 Republican House members that voted to impeach Trump, eight are now gone and only 2 will be on the ballot in November. The party is definitely getting rid its moderates as fast as it can.

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I think “fans” may be a little strong of a word here. It feels more like Democrats view Cheney as acting within the government structures and process, even while disagreeing with all of her policy positions. Comparatively, the rest of the GOP doesn’t believe in the government structures and process and also has bad policy. The “fan” perception is only relative to that low bar.

I think we’re in for a wild ride now, in a dystopian kind of way, with her being pushed out. It seems clear that Cheney is unhappy about the direction the GOP has moved, related to government structure and process not policy items. While she was on the inside, there was room to try and reform the GOP. Pushed out now, she’s got nothing to loose. I fully expect her to work at destroying the part of the GOP that’s incompatible with how government works.

It was her party and they threw her out and corrupted the whole thing. I don’t expect her to take that lightly, and think she will go after them, burn that part to ground and resurrect what she’ll see as her party.

If she succeeds, I’ll still dislike all her policy choices. But, at least she may restore the structure of a functioning government process.

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Cheney is a conservative. She is a hard core conservative, voting conservative values every time. She is in many respects the ideal of a supporter of the ideology the Republican party used to represent.

But the Republican party has gone so fascist that someone who supports the overall platform is othered because she dared respect and wants to enforce the democratic rules and rejects the current party strong man.

They don’t even have a real ideology any more, other than the rest of the world (RaDiCaL lEfTiStS) wants to destroy America and they are the only ones who can stop it. And that Trump is the godking.

I appreciate her work on the January 6th Committee and her drive to excise Trump from the party.

This won’t be the end of Cheney. She will still be a player in the party - at least for awhile. If they can right the ship back to Neo Cons in power, then she will probably end up being pretty prominent in the future. Unless it goes full Q/Trump/Wackadoo and they get rid of the current Neo Con base in power - in which case we all lose.

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A slight majority of Trump endorsed candidates have been wining at the primaries. And a couple of prominent critics have lost their primaries. Cheney being the big one.

On the other hand that’s triggering shit like this. And it’s a potential bigger problem for the GOP, since this is going down in swing states, and areas that have been shifting towards Democrats as much as it’s going down in deep red districts. Overall there are more seats that are considered competitive or even likely for Dems come the fall than there were. Mostly down to Trump’s chosen candidates or infighting they’ve stirred up.

So he’s definitely doing some consolidating within the party. But that doesn’t equate to good looks for November or party infighting calming down.

Never existed.

Most of those people took their ball and went home years ago. “Retirement” being easier than pushing back.

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Democrats have become fans of Cheney

Oh hell no. It’s nice to see a member of the GOP have a spine while in office (Man, really sick of them suddenly talking sense as they leave office)

No fan of her or her family.

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Except it would have been easier for her to keep her head down and embrace Trump. She didn’t.

The more they split, the more likely the party will split, and solve the problem of them getting elected in many places.

True, but the “centrists” are still in the party. If Cheney leaves the party, that could mean an actual split. The Trump wing can’t win without the centrists, I’d argue.

Sure! But that has long been the case.

Some already do. I don’t know if that will completely deal with people looking to grift, though it will limit the damage they can likely do.

Could be, but it could just be that there are plenty of people scared to speak out in an election season. Could also be some waiting to see how the chips fall.

I think that’s the case.

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She is what many in the media pretend is still the GOP. Those are nostalgic goggles and no longer true.

She’s not going to go quietly. There’s no chance she just fades into the background. Meaning, it’s not an abstract “they” working to right the ship, it’ll be her. It’ll be a pissed off Liz Cheney coming for the people that took her party away from her.

The rest of us can hope she wins, or at least weakens both sides of the GOP enough that they both lose.

Between the existing GOP that have previously turned on MAGA and adding her to the mix, I’m willing to bet she’s the scarier one. Remember, her personal experience is that her dad shot a guy in the face and got the injured guy to apologize for the incident.

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We have to give her credit for not being an outright fascist, I guess. I mean, there’s not a lot of credit to be given for that, but…

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We should. We can give her credit for that and hold in our heads that she’s wrong on pretty much everything.

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I thought his aides and lieutenants were supposed to be of questionable competence?

I don’t think it takes a lot of competence to push out far right propaganda onto the airwaves that they’re aware that their base are watching religiously. We’ve had years of people on the right (even on the “moderate” right) talking about how you can’t trust “the lamestream media” and you can’t trust “Washington insiders”… it’s easy to brand Cheney as a “Washington insider” and a traitor since she’s on the Jan. 6th committee.

But the biggest trick that far right has managed to get away with for much of the 20th century and into the 21st is that of being highly intelligent and highly competent. Neither are particularly true. It’s bullies who managed to get into positions of power (mainly via pre-existing ties of wealth and privilege), and then using force, lies, and subterfuge to get what they want. As the other side actually values truth and a peaceful society, and compromise, it’s pretty easy to undermine them. It’s also pretty easy to brand them as “far left” and scare the centrist into going along with their plans.

None of this takes much competence and brain power. It just takes violence and a big enough megaphone to get your lies out.

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