Wyoming

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Harriet Hageman: who is the Republican who beat Liz Cheney?

      by

      Harriet Hageman: who is the Republican who beat Liz Cheney?The lawyer appears to be the ideal candidate to carry Trump’s rightwing banner into the midterms – but she hasn’t always been aboard his train A conservative lawyer with a passion for thwarting environmentalists, Harriet Hageman would appear to be an ideal candidate to carry Donald Trump’s rightwing banner into November’s midterm elections.On Tuesday night she beat the incumbent and member of Wyoming’s political royalty, Liz Cheney, for the thinly populated western state’s solitary seat in the US House of Representatives.Liz Cheney considers run for president after Republican primary defeatRead moreAfter trouncing Cheney, Trump’s most vocal critic within the Republican party, Hageman, 59, has a clear run at election success. In an overwhelmingly red state, Cheney defeated her Democratic challenger in 2020 by a margin of almost three votes to one.Hageman, however, has not always been such an enthusiastic passenger aboard the Trump train.Her stance has shifted from calling him “the weakest candidate” in the 2016 primaries, when she attempted to help maneuver the Texas senator Ted Cruz into the Republican presidential nomination, to “the greatest president of my lifetime” when she eagerly embraced Trump’s endorsement as his chosen candidate to topple Cheney, his latest bete noire.Neither is this her first foray into politics. She was a losing candidate in Wyoming’s 2018 contest for state governor, finishing a distant third to the eventual winner, Mark Gordon, and one other in the Republican primary, with barely 20% of the vote.Hageman’s political positions are rooted in the minutiae of her career as a trial lawyer representing Wyoming’s ranchers, and advocating for energy industries against federal protections for water, land and the endangered gray wolf.A 1989 graduate of the University of Wyoming’s college of law, her most successful case, according to the New York Times, was persuading a judge in 2003 to block regulations from Bill Clinton’s presidency protecting millions of acres of national forests from road-building, mining and other development.She is a vocal supporter of the fossil fuel industry, telling supporters at a campaign event earlier this month that coal was an “affordable, clean, acceptable resource that we all should be using”.She has previously also angered activist groups including Defenders of the Wild for her positions on endangered species.In 2017, as an attorney for the ultra-conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation, she praised a US appeals court for cutting through “emotional arguments” and upholding the delisting of gray wolves.The following year, the Sierra Club accused Wyoming of “waging a war” on wolves through hunting and allowing a “scorched earth” policy that threatened the species’ recovery from near-oblivion.Hageman was late in her campaign in converting to Trump’s false assertion that his 2020 election defeat by Joe Biden was fraudulent.In her victory speech on Tuesday night, she said: “Wyoming has spoken on behalf of everyone who is concerned that the game is becoming more and more rigged against them.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022WyomingUS politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpLiz CheneyfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      What Liz Cheney’s Lopsided Loss Says About the State of the G.O.P.

      by

      Representative Liz Cheney’s martyr-like quest to stop Donald J. Trump has ensured her place in Republican Party history. But her lopsided defeat in Wyoming on Tuesday also exposed the remarkable degree to which the former president still controls the party’s present — and its near future.Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Mr. Trump in early 2021 for his role inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol. Only two have survived the 2022 Republican primaries, a breathtaking run of losses and forced retirements in a chamber where incumbents typically prevail with ease.No single defeat was as freighted with significance as Ms. Cheney’s, or as revealing of the party’s realignment.The sheer scope of her loss — the daughter of a former vice president was defeated in a landslide — may have only strengthened Mr. Trump’s hand as he asserts his grip over the Republican Party, by revealing the futility among Republican voters of even the most vigorous prosecution of the case against him.Casting her mission of combating election denialism as a moral imperative and her work as just beginning, Ms. Cheney pledged to “do whatever it takes” to prevent a second Trump presidency. “Freedom must not, cannot and will not die here,” she declared in her concession speech on Tuesday night in Jackson.Not long ago, Ms. Cheney had been seen as a rising Republican star, even a potential House speaker-in-waiting. Now, after becoming her party’s most dogged Trump detractor — turning the Jan. 6 committee hearings into a bullhorn with which to warn of the dangers Mr. Trump and his enablers posed to the party, the country and even democracy itself — she is soon to be out of her job.Ms. Cheney had hoped the Jan. 6 riot would be a turning point for Republicans. It did prove to be a dividing line. But it was those who crossed Mr. Trump who have suffered the electoral consequences.“She may have been fighting for principles,” said Taylor Budowich, a spokesman and adviser to Mr. Trump. “But they are not the principles of the Republican Party.”Ms. Cheney made clear she was more than willing to lose her House seat, and she hinted broadly at a 2024 presidential campaign of her own, invoking Abraham Lincoln’s failed bids for lesser offices before he sought and won the presidency. On Wednesday, she formed a new political action committee, the Great Task, whose name nods to Lincoln and which will be filled with leftover campaign cash, and said she was “thinking” of running for president.But the outcome in Wyoming showed that while anti-Trump Republicans can count on ample money and media attention, the actual Republican constituency for them is far more limited. Indeed, one of Ms. Cheney’s last gasps was an effort to get Democrats to switch parties to vote in the G.O.P. primary.While anti-Trump Republicans may garner media attention, Mr. Trump is tightening his grip on the party.Emil Lippe for The New York TimesHer loss was also the latest sign that the central organizing principles of today’s Republican Party are tethered less to specific policies — she was a reliable vote for much of the Trump agenda — than to whatever Mr. Trump wants at any given time.Most recently, that has meant lashing out at federal law enforcement authorities over the search of Mr. Trump’s Florida home for missing materials with classified markings. More broadly, it has meant embracing his obsession with denying his 2020 defeat and amplifying his false claims of election fraud, regardless of the bloody fallout nearly 20 months ago or its destabilizing effect on the nation.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsLiz Cheney’s Lopsided Loss: The Republican congresswoman’s defeat in Wyoming exposed the degree to which former President Donald J. Trump still controls the party’s present — and its near future.2024 Hint: Hours after her loss, Ms. Cheney acknowledged that she was “thinking” about a White House bid, a prospect that would test the national viability of a conservative, anti-Trump platform.The ‘Impeachment 10’: With Ms. Cheney’s defeat, only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump remain.Alaska Races: Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin appeared to be on divergent paths following contests that offered a glimpse at the state’s independent streak.“You could write the history of the modern Republican Party over the last two years, and what does Jan. 6 look like? A hiccup,” said William Kristol, the neoconservative writer who co-founded Republican Voters Against Trump, a group spending millions of dollars to oppose Trump-backed election deniers. “The price of admission to today’s Republican Party is turning a blind eye to Jan. 6.”That was the experience of Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan, who voted for Mr. Trump’s impeachment weeks after taking office and lost his re-election primary this month. He said his constituents asked him about his impeachment vote 10 times as much as about anything else.“Policy is not policy toward improving government,” Mr. Meijer explained. “It’s policy as a signifier of whether you’re part of the in group or the out group.”Refusing to repeat the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, he said, put Mr. Meijer squarely in the “out group.”In Michigan, Representative Peter Meijer, who voted for impeachment, lost his primary to a Trump-backed rival. Brittany Greeson for The New York Times“I can’t tell you the number of times somebody said, ‘You don’t have to believe the election is stolen, the important thing isn’t believing it, it’s saying it,’” Mr. Meijer recalled in an interview. “That is what a Republican is supposed to do right now.”If a series of primary setbacks this spring had showed that Mr. Trump was not invincible, then races in August have showcased his enduring influence.Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington State, another Republican vote for impeachment, was ousted by a Trump supporter. A Trump-backed candidate, Tim Michels, who has entertained trying to overturn the 2020 election, won the Republican nomination for governor of Wisconsin. And Mr. Trump’s preferred candidates swept the nominations in Arizona for Senate, governor, attorney general and secretary of state. All embraced his election denialism. More

    • 200 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Liz Cheney says she 'could not go along with Trump's lie' after primary defeat – video

      by

      Liz Cheney has been defeated in a GOP primary, losing her seat in Congress to Harriet Hageman, who was backed by the former president Donald Trump. Cheney, a third-term congresswoman, and her allies entered the contest downbeat about her prospects, aware that Trump’s backing gave Hageman a considerable lift in the state where he won by the largest margin during the 2020 campaign. 
      ‘Two years ago, I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again,’ Cheney said. ‘The path was clear, but it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enabled his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic. That was a path I could not and would not take’

      Liz Cheney loses Wyoming Republican primary to Trump-endorsed rival
      Sarah Palin’s political career in the balance as Alaska holds special election More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Wednesday briefing: What Cheney’s drubbing means for US politics

      by

      Wednesday briefing: What Cheney’s drubbing means for US politicsIn today’s newsletter: Is Liz Cheney’s defeat in the Wyoming primary a triumph for far-right populism – or the beginning of a new chapter?

      Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First Edition
      Good morning. Like Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson, I’ve had a lovely summer holiday; unlike them, nobody seems to have been that bothered by my absence. With apologies to those who were hoping for more from Nimo, I’m writing to you this morning with news breaking in the US state of Wyoming, where Representative Liz Cheney, one of the few Republicans to hold Donald Trump accountable for the January 6 insurrection, has been handed an absolute drubbing.In the last couple of hours, Cheney conceded defeat in the primary contest for her seat in the US House of Representatives to Trump’s preferred revenge candidate, standing 37 points behind Harriet Hageman with 95% of precincts reporting. Two years ago, Cheney won her primary with 73% of the vote. Hageman will go forward to the midterm elections in November – and with Democrats nowhere in Wyoming, she will be returned as the state’s sole congressional representative.Cheney’s defeat means that Washington DC will lose its most authoritative and best-known Republican critic of Trump – and yet some Democrats are willing to bet that the more extreme their opponents, the better they will do.Today’s newsletter, with the help of David Smith reporting from Wyoming, is about Liz Cheney – and what her result tells us about Trump’s continuing influence over the Republican party and American politics. That’s right after the headlines.Five big stories
      Conservatives | An audio recording leaked to the Guardian has revealed that Liz Truss said British workers lacked the “skill and application” of their overseas counterparts and needed “more graft”. Her campaign claimed the recording of Truss – who has accused her critics of “talking Britain down” – “lacked context”.
      Farming | UK food tsar Henry Dimbleby has said reducing the consumption of meat and dairy is the only way to sustainably farm in England and avoid ecological breakdown.
      Ukraine | Ukraine is engaged in a counteroffensive aimed at creating “chaos within Russian forces” by striking at supply lines deep into occupied territories, a key adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the Guardian.
      Inflation | The real value of wages in the UK dropped by 3% in June, the fastest fall in 20 years, as inflation continues to outpace average pay.
      Culture | The former Pop Idol contestant and theatre star Darius Campbell Danesh has died at the age of 41. His family said Danesh died at his apartment in Rochester, Minnesota and that the cause of death was as yet unknown.
      In depth: What went down in WyomingLiz Cheney is, by almost any measure, as conservative as they come. She opposes abortion rights, denies that human activity is responsible for the climate crisis and supports tax cuts for the wealthy. When Trump was president, she voted with him 93% of the time.All of which would appear to make her a solid match for Wyoming, which last elected a Democrat to her congressional seat in 1976. But Cheney differed from what now counts as the GOP mainstream on one crucial subject: the result of the 2020 presidential election, and in particular Donald Trump’s responsibility for the events that followed on January 6.She went on to be vice-chair and the most prominent voice of the House January 6 select committee, and, in the face of credible and numerous death threats, become an unlikely hero for Democrats nostalgic for a bygone age of (some) principled, bipartisan politics. But close to 70% of Wyoming voters went for Trump in 2020, and 70% of Republicans across the US believe his false claim that the election was stolen. As a direct result, Cheney will be out of a job on 3 January next year.“There wasn’t much of a note of sadness or disappointment in her concession speech,” said David Smith, speaking shortly after attending Cheney’s campaign event in Jackson, Wyoming. “She knew this was coming.” Even so, “it’s worth remembering how unthinkable this would have been a couple of years ago. It’s another symbolic indicator of how Trump has transformed his party.”What happened last night?The margin against Cheney, even bigger than polls had suggested, represents an “absolutely crushing victory for Trump,” David said. “There’s no two ways about it. We’ve talked about what these primaries show us about Trump’s influence all year, but Wyoming was always the most watched.”For a sense of how deeply Cheney is opposed in her state, see David’s dispatch published on Saturday, and this line from one critic: “​​She’s going to ‘educate’ us in the constitution and how ‘we’re wrong and she’s right.’ Well … She’s gonna find out if she educated us or not.”While Trump’s false claims about the election and his role in the January 6 riot were clearly a crucial factor here, David also notes that Cheney’s opponents sought to argue that she was “interested in Washington over Wyoming, and had forgotten her constituents. And to some extent she leaned into that – she wasn’t discussing Wyoming policy at her concession speech, she was talking about the big national picture.”How does the result in Wyoming fit into the wider story?One measure of the big picture for Republican critics of Trump, and of his enduring influence, might be an analysis of the fates of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol riot. Of those 10, four including Cheney have lost their primaries, four have retired and just two have survived.As David wrote last week, Cheney’s result can be seen as “a final national pivot away from the Bush-era establishment to the Make America Great Again movement – from old school conservatism to far-right populism.” Symbolically enough, David pointed out, Cheney’s father Dick, “Darth Vader of the Bush era himself,” was present last night “to see his daughter crushed by the MAGA movement. If you were looking for symbols, that’s pretty on-the-nose.”Trump hasn’t had it all his own way in 2022, David added, and the different outcomes are indicative of the contrasting political landscapes in deep red states like Wyoming and other more balanced races. “In Georgia, for example, the candidates he endorsed flopped,” he said. “But he’s had a surge in congressional primaries recently. After some speculation that his grip is weakening, he’s reasserted himself.”Where does that leave Democrats?Grim as the depth of Republicans’ commitment to Trumpism is for American democracy, it isn’t necessarily the worst news for Joe Biden – or, at least, that’s what Democrats appear to think. One notable feature of this primary season (in races more likely to be competitive in November than Wyoming) has been Democratic funding of ads designed to elevate the chances of the most extreme Republican candidates, in the hope of ensuring unelectable opponents.The jury’s out on whether that’s a good idea. In a piece on that strategy last week, Lauren Gambino quoted Richard Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy project, who said that at a moment when the stolen election myth is such a potent force in American politics, the Democrats’ approach is “immoral and dangerous”.While Biden has endured dismal poll ratings, the picture has gotten a little better in recent weeks, with many on his own side appearing newly motivated by the supreme court’s ruling to overturn Roe v Wade and the unexpected passage of a $739bn healthcare and climate bill.That has changed the political weather: polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight still expects Republicans to win the House, but it now views Democrats as slight favourites to keep control of the Senate. (One reason why, as Adam Gabbatt lays out here, is the calibre of some of the celebrity candidates the GOP has chosen.)Even if this helps in November, though, Cheney’s result and the Democratic strategy still point to the looming threat in 2024: a national election where Republican positions are defined by their most extreme anti-democratic voices – with Trump himself at the top of the ticket.What will Cheney do next?Cheney appeared to have accepted the inevitably of her defeat some time ago. An ad featuring her father excoriating Trump appeared more likely to appeal to a national audience than the party faithful at home. She has stayed in Washington when she might have been expected to be campaigning on the ground in Wyoming. And she has held back much of her considerable war chest.Cheney will keep her role on the January 6 committee for the rest of the year. Many suspect that one reason she kept some money back is a larger ambition in the future: a run at the presidency. In her concession speech, she dropped a clear hint about that prospect, saying: “Abraham Lincoln was defeated in elections for the Senate and House before he won the most important election of all.”Most analysts believe that she would be a long-shot candidate – and, as this Washington Post piece reports, she is herself “clear-eyed” about her prospects. Instead, she may see her possible role as a spoiler for Trump should he run again.But as David also noted: “The Cheneys always play a very long game. Her father was chief of staff to Gerald Ford decades before he was vice president. I assume Liz Cheney will view this as one setback in a very long story.”What else we’ve been reading
      Oliver Wainwright spoke to the architects who believe that “demolition is an act of violence” and are breathing new life into old buildings instead. Nimo
      Ballon d’Or winners Ada Hegerberg and Megan Rapinoe’s conversation about the state of women’s football is full of insight on how to capitalise on England’s success in the Euros – and features this bracing quote from Rapinoe: “Welcome, everybody, to the party. You’re extremely fucking late, but fine.” Archie
      In the last two years, the number of Asian Americans buying guns for the first time has risen by 43% – Claire Wang explains why. Nimo
      Comedian Nish Kumar writes about why, despite rising costs for performers and fewer younger acts, the Edinburgh fringe festival is still an invaluable place for artists to hone their craft. Nimo
      As a walking liberal cliche, I spent a good chunk of my holiday dutifully catching up on the New Yorker. Easily my favourite piece was this hilarious, fascinating story by Tad Friend about a door-to-door salesman blessed with low cunning – and cursed with a bit of a conscience. Archie
      SportTennis | Emma Raducanu defeated Serena Williams 6-4, 6-0 in a first round match at a tournment in Cincinnati. Williams’ defeat to the British No 1, 21 years her junior, is likely her penultimate tournament appearance.Athletics | Daryll Neita won bronze for the UK in the European women’s 100m as Dina Asher-Smith pulled up with cramp. Germany’s Gina Luckenkemper won gold in the race. Zharnel Hughes took silver and Jeremiah Azu bronze behind the Italian Olympic champion Marcell Jacobs in the men’s 100m.Football | Rangers were forced to settle for a 2-2 draw in their Champions League playoff first leg against PSV Eindhoven after an Armando Obispo equaliser in the 78th minute. Rangers last reached the Champions League group stage 12 years ago.The front pagesThe Guardian leads with “Truss condemns British workers for lack of ‘graft’” while the Express has “Truss fury over EUs Brexit betrayal”. The Times goes with “Sunak turns on rival over ‘moral’ duty to ease bills”.The Telegraph’s splash reads “Modern slavery law is the ‘biggest loophole’ for migrants” and the FT says “Record fall in wages signals more cost of living pain for households”.The i newspaper has “Omicron jab: Blair calls for every adult to get a booster,” while the Mail leads with “Cyclists may need number plates”.Ryan Giggs, on trial over alleged assault, makes the Mirror’s front page with the headline: “I’m a love cheat, I can’t resist”. The Sun has “Pop idol Darius dead”.Today in FocusUnderstanding the violent attack on Salman RushdieColumnist Nesrine Malik on the history of the fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie and power of his workCartoon of the day | Steve BellThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badIn 2001, a band called Panchiko played a festival in the Nottinghamshire town of Sutton-in-Ashfield. It was a flop: the crowd wasn’t enthused, and the band disbanded soon after, drifting apart from one another. That was until 2016, when their album turned up in a charity shop. The person who bought the CD made it their mission to find out who was behind the album. Thus began Panchiko’s journey into the cultural zeitgeist. For years, internet sleuths looked for Panchiko – and eventually found them. The former bandmates were shocked that, after all these years, they had, without their knowledge, acquired a dedicated fanbase. Now in their 40s, the band have come together for a US tour that is already partly sold out.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
      Quick crossword
      Cryptic crossword
      TopicsRepublicansFirst EditionUS politicsWyomingJanuary 6 hearingsnewslettersReuse this content More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Liz Cheney’s Concession Speech Invokes Lincoln and Grant

      by

      It was just two years ago that Representative Liz Cheney won a primary with 73 percent of the vote — a point she reminded her supporters of in her concession speech on Tuesday night in Wyoming.“I could easily have done the same again,” she said. “The path was clear. But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic.”“That was a path I could not and would not take.”The path Ms. Cheney took instead led her to be ousted as chair of the House Republican conference, the third-highest role in her party’s House leadership, and installed as the vice chair of the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.“Let us resolve that we will stand together — Republicans, Democrats and independents — against those who would destroy our republic,” Representative Liz Cheney said on Tuesday night.Kim Raff for The New York TimesAnd it led her to a more than 30 percentage point loss to a Trump-endorsed Republican, Harriet Hageman, as votes were still being counted late Tuesday night.From a stage overlooking a field in Teton County, Wyo., with mountains as her backdrop, she said she had called Ms. Hageman to concede her loss in a free and fair election. She suggested that her job now, and that of patriotic Americans, was to stand up for the Constitution.Much like the remarks she delivered at the Jan. 6 committee’s hearings, it was a speech that seemed directed not just at Republican voters, but at a wider national audience.That was evident in her paraphrase of a quote popularized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — “It has been said that the long arc of history bends toward justice and freedom. That’s true, but only if we make it bend” — and even more so a few minutes later, when she turned her attention to the Civil War.In the spring of 1864, after the Union suffered more than 17,000 casualties in the Battle of the Wilderness, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had a choice, Ms. Cheney said: to retreat or to keep fighting.“As the fires of the battles still smoldered, Grant rode to the head of the column,” she said. “He rode to the intersection of Brock Road and Orange Plank Road. And there, as the men of his army watched and waited, instead of turning north, back toward Washington and safety, Grant turned his horse south toward Richmond and the heart of Lee’s army. Refusing to retreat, he pressed on to victory.” More

    • 75 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Wyoming Governor Primary Election Results 2022

      by

      Source: Election results and race calls from The Associated Press. The Times estimates the number of remaining votes based on historic turnout data and reporting from The Associated Press. These are only estimates and they may not be informed by official reports from election officials.The New York Times’s results team is a group of graphics editors, engineers and reporters who build and maintain software to publish election results in real-time as they are reported by results providers. To learn more about how election results work, read this article.The Times’s election results pages are produced by Michael Andre, Aliza Aufrichtig, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Véronique Brossier, Irineo Cabreros, Sean Catangui, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Asmaa Elkeurti, Tiffany Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Will Houp, Josh Katz, Aaron Krolik, Jasmine C. Lee, Rebecca Lieberman, Ilana Marcus, Jaymin Patel, Rachel Shorey, Charlie Smart, Umi Syam, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang. Reporting by Reid J. Epstein, Lalena Fisher and Jazmine Ulloa; production by Amanda Cordero and Jessica White; editing by Wilson Andrews, Kenan Davis, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes and Ben Koski. More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Wyoming Secretary of State Primary Election Results 2022

      by

      Source: Election results from The Associated Press. The Times estimates the number of remaining votes based on historic turnout data and reporting from The Associated Press. These are only estimates and they may not be informed by official reports from election officials.The New York Times’s results team is a group of graphics editors, engineers and reporters who build and maintain software to publish election results in real-time as they are reported by results providers. To learn more about how election results work, read this article.The Times’s election results pages are produced by Michael Andre, Aliza Aufrichtig, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Véronique Brossier, Irineo Cabreros, Sean Catangui, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Asmaa Elkeurti, Tiffany Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Will Houp, Josh Katz, Aaron Krolik, Jasmine C. Lee, Rebecca Lieberman, Ilana Marcus, Jaymin Patel, Rachel Shorey, Charlie Smart, Umi Syam, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang. Reporting by Reid J. Epstein, Lalena Fisher and Jazmine Ulloa; production by Amanda Cordero and Jessica White; editing by Wilson Andrews, Kenan Davis, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes and Ben Koski. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      What Liz Cheney’s Loss in Wyoming Means

      by

      If Liz Cheney’s loss to Harriet Hageman in Wyoming’s primary election on Tuesday seems like a bad dream to many of Ms. Cheney’s Democratic admirers, that’s because it is: For a generation, progressives have imagined the moment when the white working class would finally turn against an insular and privileged Republican establishment. That day has arrived. But it isn’t what Democrats dreamed.Apparently uninterested in everyday governing, the new insurgents who elected Ms. Hageman are consumed with demonstrating that they are authentic conservative Republicans. And in that sense, they are succumbing to the same impulses they associate with their liberal opponents: a shrill hostility to different viewpoints, an obsession with virtue signaling and a willingness to purge their own ranks. The older tradition of Republican politics — the one that cradled Ms. Cheney from girlhood and shaped her in office — is still alive, though embattled, even in Wyoming. Progressives who realize that this privileged Republican establishment was a linchpin of our democracy all along may start rooting for a counterrevolution from above rather than a revolution from below.In the not very distant past, Wyoming’s G.O.P. was focused on governing the state by addressing everyday challenges, like distributing a limited number of liquor licenses and funding its public schools. Politics was “frankly boring,” recalled Tim Stubson, a partisan of the old school.The Cheneys exemplified Wyoming’s establishment: They are quiet and diligent legislators, even a little bland. They are also highly educated and wealthy, splitting their time between Washington and Wyoming’s Teton County, one of the wealthiest counties in the United States.Wyoming politics began to change beneath their feet, slowly at first, as the Tea Party rose to power, and then rapidly during the Trump years, as a new guard waged war with the establishment, making politics less about ordinary governance than about identity.We’ve spent the last year traveling Wyoming, from Cheyenne in the south to Sheridan in the north, from Evanston in the west to Wheatland in the east, talking to local political activists and leaders. This obsession with identity left a mark everywhere, but nowhere more obviously than at the recent Republican state conventions. Just a decade ago, few delegates would have attended party meetings with guns strapped to their hips. Now many do. That wasn’t enough for one delegate at the last convention: He reportedly strutted about with a gun fully cocked. In another departure from old norms, many delegates have taken to wearing their cowboy hats inside the convention center. “That’s not a Wyoming thing,” noted JoAnn True, a patron of the old party. This is mostly because there is no need to wear a cowboy hat indoors — unless your goal is to sport a costume that signals a conservative social identity.Virtue signaling is also on the rise. One convention delegate argued that Wyoming schoolchildren should not be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance, since the word “indivisible” suggests that states can’t secede from the union. Another Republican Party figure was criticized for allegedly failing to adopt an appropriately respectful posture during the pledge.Acting the part of a true Wyoming conservative is a delicate art. It’s not only about signaling that you belong to a rugged, rural working class, but also about highlighting your conservative bona fides, which often means exiling anyone who doesn’t toe the line. Now a conservative cancel culture as unforgiving as its progressive rival is sweeping over the Wyoming G.O.P.Ms. Cheney, of course, is the most prominent victim of that cancel culture: She has been censured twice by the party, and now has been voted out of office. But she is just the tip of an iceberg that mostly lies beneath the media’s radar. Other members of the old type have been censured as well. Their crimes are varied, ranging from supporting Medicaid expansion to founding a nonpartisan PAC to fund female candidates.Websites have emerged that help the new censors identify politically incorrect Republicans. WyoRINO, for example, exposes legislators “who falsely claim to be Republicans” by scrutinizing their voting records for the slightest signs of apostasy. According to the site’s index, nearly a two-thirds majority of Wyoming’s Republican legislators are faking it.Those who are formally censured, though, usually have something else in common: They are from the upper class. In recent years the party has censured a wealthy activist, a state senator with a doctorate and a physician. Joe McGinley, the physician — a prominent party leader of the old style — was censured for reasons that are still a bit mysterious. But as a Stanford-trained doctor, he was a perfect symbol of an inauthentic conservative. Joey Correnti IV, a pistol-packing delegate, mocks his supposed haughtiness, claiming that he introduces himself as “Doctor Joe McGinley.”Plenty of the new insurgents are themselves comfortable members of the professional class pretending to be “one of the people.” Some, like Ms. Hageman, simply seem opportunistic, while others sincerely share cultural affinities with Wyoming’s working class. But to its credit, the new identity politics has also done something rare in this gilded age of American politics: It has elevated genuinely working-class citizens into positions of power. For example, Tom James, elected to the State Senate in 2018, grew up in a foster home and campaigned for office as he delivered pizzas. Meanwhile, Frank Eathorne, the current chairman of the state party, previously worked as a Terminix pest exterminator. As Tim Stubson of the old establishment acknowledged, “It’s a much more blue-collar party.”These candidates are starting to reshape the G.O.P. beyond Wyoming as well. Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado earned a G.E.D., having left high school after she got pregnant. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, a truck driver won a State Senate seat on a shoestring budget. And in Arizona, Rusty Bowers — who resisted pressure from Donald Trump to overturn his state’s election results — was just badly defeated by David Farnsworth, a small businessman and former crane operator with an A.A. degree.For decades, progressives have hoped that the white working class would turn against the affluent bankers, doctors and oil magnates who control the Republican Party. Well, it did. Class warfare of a kind did finally break out. It’s just not the sort of war progressives imagined, much less hoped for.That’s true partly because progressive longings for class war rested on a falsehood. Influential books like Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas” insisted that the Republican elite was rapaciously consumed with padding its wealth and exploiting its working-class supporters. Like other myths, that critique contained a kernel of truth. Wyoming’s establishment was too insular at times — and it practiced self-dealing on occasion.But whatever its sins, it was also public spirited. It cared about the general welfare of the state and worked hard on its behalf, laboring away for a pittance in a legislature that begins its sessions in the dead of Wyoming’s punishing winter, when driving is treacherous. The new identitarians infiltrating the State Legislature seem less interested in seeking remedies to real problems than in signaling to their base.Thus, they perform small symbolic acts, like pushing a bill that requires local law enforcement officials to ignore federal law that violates the Second Amendment, or sponsoring a bill that prohibited the teaching of critical race theory in Wyoming public schools. It failed because enough traditional conservatives don’t believe it’s a real problem. Tom Walters, a state representative of the old school, observed, “They speak of it as though it’s there, and yet they know all their teachers and they know their teachers aren’t teaching it.”Addressing these phantoms swallows up time, leaving larger issues neglected. Cathy Connolly, the Democratic minority leader in the State House, told us: “We have one of the highest suicide rates in the nation. We now have the highest workplace fatality rate. We’ve got Covid issues. We’ve got hospitals closing. We’re not looking at these issues because we have these stupid bills,” she said, adding an expletive.The right’s new identity craze wasn’t engineered by Donald Trump. It simply created an opportunity that he exploited. But Mr. Trump has rendered identity politics more dangerous than its progressive rival by wedding it to a cult of personality and a campaign to steal an election. Those changes have only widened the party’s class divide: While a substantial majority of white Republican primary voters without a college degree say they would prefer to vote for him in 2024, those with college degrees generally want someone else, according to a July New York Times/Siena College poll.Ms. Cheney’s fall highlights the cultish character of the right’s evolving politics of identity. During her first two terms, she supported Mr. Trump’s positions 93 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight (almost as often as Kevin McCarthy and more often than Elise Stefanik). Yet Ms. Cheney is not only considered to be a “Republican in Name Only” by many Wyoming Republicans — she is the face of the RINOs. At the state convention, one attendee sported a T-shirt that said “No More RINOs” with Ms. Cheney’s name circled and crossed out. To cross Mr. Trump is to become a fake conservative.Sadly, the G.O.P. establishment was not strong enough to save Ms. Cheney. Happily, though, it isn’t dead, even in Wyoming. In fact, it’s far more entrenched than Ms. Cheney’s defeat might suggest. The old guard still controls the State Legislature and Wyoming’s two most populous counties, both of which pushed back forcefully on efforts to censure Ms. Cheney. And in some places the new insurgents have been outmaneuvered and beaten back. For example, in Campbell County, where support for Mr. Trump surpasses that of most Wyoming counties, the establishment wrestled the party away from the new identitarians.Similar fights are playing out in state parties and legislatures from Colorado to Arizona, Idaho, Illinois and Texas, where the new identitarians are gaining momentum, chipping away at the old guard’s power. But even if they continue to advance, their style of politics may also contain the seeds of its destruction. Any party that elevates symbolism over governing risks stirring mass revolt down the road. Some practitioners of identity politics on the left have already discovered that lesson the hard way. When some members of the San Francisco Board of Education busied themselves renaming schools instead of prioritizing reopening them after lengthy closures during the pandemic, they were recalled. Results matter even in the age of identity politics.Though the outcome of the G.O.P.’s civil war is impossible to determine, one thing is clear: Both sides see the conflict in existential terms. As the traditionalist Dr. McGinley said of Ms. Cheney’s race: “The soul of the Republican Party is at stake.” Ms. Cheney fought valiantly for the party’s soul and was celebrated by traditional Republicans in Wyoming for doing so. They don’t believe her cause is lost — and neither should we.Stephanie Muravchik (@stephaniemurav1) and Jon A. Shields are professors of government at Claremont McKenna College and the authors of “Trump’s Democrats.” They are working on a new book about Liz Cheney’s Wyoming and the future of the American right.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More