Jennifer Rubin thinks Rep Liz Cheney (R-WY) might make a run for the Presidency, presenting the GOP with a chance to get out of the insane lane:
What is certain is that Trump will try to maintain the prospect of running in 2024 for as long as possible, both to stay in the limelight and make money as well as to position himself to characterize any prosecution as solely political. If he’s still hovering over the race in 2023, other Republicans may be frozen out of the contest (and deprived of donors) for fear of antagonizing the man whose wrath they fear. In that scenario, Cheney might be the only candidate facing Trump in a 2024 primary, at least for many months.
That’s all a long way off, but this much is clear: If Cheney can win in 2022, dealing a blow to the MAGA GOP, she might establish herself as the sole alternative on the right to four years of chaos, lawlessness, incompetence and corruption. That doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that she would win that fight. But it would give Republicans one final off-ramp from the road to democracy’s demise. [WaPo]
She may attempt to run, but she won’t attract votes from the current GOP – assuming they haven’t imploded by 2024 – because she embodies a strong reproach to their terrible behavior and deeply immature political state of mind. That, in turn, is a reproach to every GOP voter that thinks God meant for Trump to win in 2020. It’d be deeply humiliating for them to vote for Cheney for President.
Her only chance is if the Democrats go too far left, as Andrew Sullivan occasionally mentions, and the Hispanics and Black communities choose to go with Cheney, instead. She has not, so far as I know, displayed any xenophobia, and I believe she apologized for earlier anti-gay attitudes.
But that seems like an unlikely result. Biden’s too experienced to let that get too far out of hand.
