Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming said she would prefer working with House Democrats over working with some House Republicans.
“I would much rather serve with Mikie Sherrill and Chrissy Houlahan and Elissa Slotkin than Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, even though on substance certainly I have big disagreements with the Democratic women I just mentioned,” Cheney told The New York Times.
“But they love this country, they do their homework and they are people that are trying to do the right thing for the country,” she said of Sherrill, Houlahan and Slotkin, who represent New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan, respectively, in the House.
Reps. Greene of Georgia and Boebert of Colorado belong to the populist faction of the Republican Party, which backs former President Donald Trump and positions itself in opposition to the party’s establishment.
“What the country needs are serious people who are willing to engage in debates about policy,” Cheney told the Times.
She was discussing her political future ahead of the Aug. 16 Wyoming Republican primary elections.
According to a Casper Star-Tribune poll released last month, attorney Harriet Hageman, who is running against Cheney, had a lead of 52 percent to 30 percent.
“The big story is Liz Cheney is going to get beat,” Brad Coker, director of Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy, told the Star-Tribune. “That’s a foregone conclusion.”
A mere 27 percent of those polled said they approved of the congresswoman’s job performance, while 66 percent said they disapproved of the job Cheney was doing, with 7 percent saying they were unsure, the report said.
Part of Cheney’s low approval ratings in her state come from her fierce opposition to Trump and her role in the Democrats’ House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion.
She and another anti-Trump lawmaker, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, are the only Republicans on the panel, and she joined him in voting for Trump’s second impeachment.
The congresswoman’s alignment with the Democrats on these issues has earned her the opprobrium of most GOP residents of her state, where Trump won 70 percent of the vote in 2020, according to the Times.
“Liz Cheney betrayed President Trump. Ninety-nine point nine percent pure RINO,” Mark Hladik, a Wyoming resident of 42 years, told the Star-Tribune, using the acronym for “Republican in name only.”
“This race is more about Liz Cheney than it is about Donald Trump,” Coker said. “Anybody who’s credible, who ran to the right of Liz Cheney would probably win this race — with or without Donald Trump.”
Cheney, however, brushed off concerns of her losing the primary in an interview held at the conference room of a bank in Cheyenne.
“If the cost of standing up for the Constitution is losing the House seat, then that’s a price I’m willing to pay,” she told the Times.
The congresswoman expressed pride in opposing the former president.
“The nine of us have done more to prevent Trump from ever regaining power than any group to date,” Cheney said of her colleagues on the Jan. 6 committee. “We can’t let up.”
She said the GOP, which she described as “very sick,” might not be “salvageable” in the short term.
However, Cheney told the Times that she did not want to switch parties.
“I’m a Republican,” she said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
