Cheney, facing near certain defeat in Wyoming's GOP primary, eyes bigger battle ahead

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Rep. Liz Cheney: Trump 'breached' constitutional duty more than any previous president

Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney speaks on the Jan. 6 committee's findings and her run for re-election on "Fox News Sunday."

Embattled Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, in her closing message to Wyoming voters ahead of the state’s Tuesday primary, once again spotlighted her mission to make sure that former President Trump never returns to the White House.

"America cannot remain free if we abandon the truth. The lie that 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious. It preys on those who love their country. It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts and the rule of law," the three-term conservative congresswoman emphasized at the top of a video her campaign released Thursday.

Cheney was the most senior of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach the then-president on a charge of inciting the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol. The attack was waged by right-wing extremists and other Trump supporters who aimed to disrupt congressional certification of President Biden’s Electoral College victory in the 2020 election.

Public opinion polls indicate Cheney will likely get trounced on Tuesday in the Republican primary for Wyoming’s statewide congressional district. She badly trails Harriet Hageman, a lawyer and politician who has been endorsed and heavily supported by Trump as the former president aims to oust Cheney from her House seat in a state where he won a whopping 70% of the vote in 2020.

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Republican congressional candidate Harriet Hageman, the Donald Trump-backed challenger to GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, campaigns at the Goshen County Fair parade, in Torrington, Wyoming, on Aug. 4, 2022. (Hageman congressional campaign)

But Cheney — in comments made in recent weeks — seems to be at peace that the likely outcome on Tuesday is a price she has to pay in order to achieve success in her bigger fight against Trump.

"I am working hard to earn every single vote," Cheney said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday" late last month. But she emphasized, "Given the choice between maintaining my seat in the House of Representatives on the one hand or ensuring the survival of our constitutional republic and ensuring the American people know the truth about Donald Trump, I will choose the Constitution and the truth every day of the week and twice on Sunday."

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Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, starring in his daughter’s closing primary campaign ad last week, said that he and his wife, former second lady Lynne Cheney, "are so proud of Liz for standing up for the truth, doing what is right, honoring her oath to the Constitution when so many in our own party are too scared to do so. Liz is fearless. She never backs down from a fight."

And the former vice president stressed that "there is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office. And she will succeed."

The younger Cheney, in her closing video, took aim at her primary challenger's strong support for Trump’s repeated unproven claims that his 2020 ballot box loss to Biden was due to "massive voter fraud" and a "rigged" and "stolen" election.

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"Like many candidates across this country, my opponents in Wyoming have said that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen. No one who understands our nation's laws, no one with an honest, honorable, genuine commitment to our Constitution would say that. It is a cancer that threatens our great Republic," Cheney argued.

And the congresswoman, a co-chair and one of only two Republicans on the Democratic-dominated Jan. 6 select committee investigating Trump’s role in the riot at the Capitol, emphasized that "nothing in our public life is more important than the preservation of the miracle given to us by God and our Founding Fathers. Nothing."

Trump remains the most popular, influential and powerful politician in the GOP as he continues to play a kingmaker’s role in this year’s Republican primaries and repeatedly teases what’s fast becoming an increasingly likely 2024 White House run.

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But there’s a feeling among Cheney’s team of supporters that her crusade against Trump this year as she runs for re-election will improve her national name recognition and bolster any potential 2024 Republican presidential nomination campaign by the congresswoman.

Cheney said on "Fox News Sunday" last month that her focus "is on absolutely doing what is right and that is what’s guided me ever since last election" when asked whether she’ll launch a White House bid. "I’m going to continue to be guided by making sure I do my duty and making sure the American people understand the truth."

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., listens to testimony on July 27, 2021, during the House select committee hearing on the attack on the Capitol. (Jim Bourg/Pool via AP, File)

Longtime Republican strategist Colin Reed told Fox News that he suspects Cheney is "someone who believes that she’s on the right side of history, doing the right thing, and she concluded long ago that the price of her current seat in Congress is a price worth paying … that seems to be the message throughout her current campaign and perhaps her future one."

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"There’s going to be a lane in the 2024 primary that emerges as someone who runs articulating the message to Republican voters that it’s time for a new direction, it’s time to move away from the past, it’s time to find a new leader to rally around," said Reed, a veteran of GOP presidential and Senate campaigns.

But pointing to the rallying by many in the GOP behind Trump this week following the FBI raid at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Reed emphasized that "as we sit here in August of 2022, that challenge — which was already going to be an uphill climb — has gotten a whole lot steeper."