Mention ‘Liz Cheney 2024’ and things get very awkward in Washington

WASHINGTON – Liz Cheney may be flirting with a 2024 presidential run, but – at least on Capitol Hill – it doesn’t seem anyone wants to take her to the dance.

The former co-chair of the Select January 6 Committee, Cheney – who represented Wyoming for three terms in Congress while also serving as a House Republican leader – continues making waves on cable news as she promotes her new book, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, especially when she has left the door open for a third-party run in some of her media hits.

“I think that the situation that we’re in is so grave, and the politics of the moment require independents and Republicans and Democrats coming together in a way that can help form a new coalition, so that may well be a third-party option,” Cheney told USA TODAY.

When Cheney’s book tour takes her to Washington, D.C., next week, she’ll be in the running for the loneliest women in Washington these days. And everyone in Washington is lonely.

The mini-dynasty of the Cheneys — Dick and Liz — may be over. At least within the Republican Party – the very party the Cheneys re-created in their own neoconservative image in the past two bomb- and Saddam-laden decades.

“Cheney 2024?” Raw Story asked several prominent members of Congress.

“I don't have particular views on the Democratic primary,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) dismissively quipped to Raw Story.

“I think RFK Jr. is a more interesting third-party candidate,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Raw Story.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) told Raw Story through a laugh.

Even among Wyoming politicians, any historic Cheney love now seems lost.

“I’ve got to give a speech right now,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) told Raw Story as he walked to the Senate floor for a perfunctory immigration speech Wednesday.

It’s not just Republicans.

“Oh my gosh, it's the least – look, I have a lot of respect for Liz Cheney – I’m not thinking about presidential politics right now. I've got too much on my mind … that we’ve got to get done,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) told Raw Story Wednesday. “So I think I'll just leave it at that.”

As Cheney has maneuvered the awkward anti-Donald Trump tightrope — seeming to throw water on a third-party run, even while stoking third-party presidential chatter — Cheney’s got a cheering squad behind her. And not just the MSNBC and CNN punditry.

Democrats have learned to love this new Liz Cheney – even as just a few years ago, most Democrats decried her and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, for their expansionist and militaristic view of U.S. foreign policy.

The attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 changed everything in Washington, it seems.

“There's a different priority now,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) told Raw Story. “She embodies a commitment to the most important priority and that's protecting our democracy.”

“Even if that means torturing other people abroad?” Raw Story pressed.

“Well, no.”

“That's what her and her dad advocated for over the years.”

“That's correct,” Welch said. “She has foreign policy things I disagree with. She has tax policy, economic policies I disagree with, but there's nobody I respect or admire more for standing up to Trump at great personal peril – she was headed to becoming speaker and she stood on principle rather than clinging on to ambition.”

A former Fox News commentator and mother of five, Liz Cheney was recently seen as a political titan among elected officials. Because she was one.

Her father, the former vice president, represented Wyoming in Congress for a decade (1979-1989), which turned “Cheney” into a household name across the sprawling western state before it became nationally known. He then served as secretary of Defense during the first Gulf War — a nightly presence on the evening news.

The name recognition helped, as Liz Cheney was promoted to the No. 3 House Republican in her second term before winning 69 percent of the vote in her third and final victorious House race in 2020.

“That’s amazing,” then-Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) – now the secretary of Housing and Urban Development – told me at the time. “I don’t even know what to say — I’m speechless that somebody that has that kind of belief system is a leader in anybody’s caucus.”

The Cheneys’ Republican honeymoon proved a blip, though.

In the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Liz Cheney voted to impeach Trump, which was seen as a betrayal by Trump, other party leaders and many rank-and-file Republicans. That impeachment vote set the dominos in motion, including her getting booted from the House GOP leadership team later that summer. Name I.D. flipped — Democrats now use “Cheney” and “patriot” in the same sentence, tortured record and all — even as her political career, at least temporarily, flopped.

Crossing Trump also led to Liz Cheney’s censure at the hand of her fellow Wyoming Republicans before the state party made it final and voted to boot her from the party that fall. She lost in a Republican primary and exited Congress in January.

“She's just not representative of the views of people in my state, and she's not representative of my views either,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) told Raw Story. “I'm a constitutional conservative and she's more of a neoconservative, and we're just not on the same page.”

Lummis is quick to point out that Trump is no constitutional conservative either, though, like most of today’s elected Republicans, she says that doesn’t matter.

“Oddly, Trump is really kind of a populist. He's not really, you know, a constitutional conservative either, but I just feel the policies when he was president felt good on the ground – to people on the ground. And I was one of those people. When he was president, I wasn't here,” Lummis said. “So it just felt good on the ground.”

One thing on which there’s no disagreement in Washington is that a GOP civil war is raging. What the party will look like on the other end remains, mostly, unclear to Lummis. Though she knows it doesn’t look like Dick and Liz Cheney.

“Honestly, as the Republican Party transitions to wherever it's going – and I don't know where it's going – it is certainly transitioning away from, the sort of, Cheney era,” Lummis said.

Cheney’s publicist and former congressional staffers did not respond to requests for comment.

That may be because they know what Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) predicts: A credible third-party run – whether Cheney or someone else – won’t reorder America’s two-party system anytime soon. For more than a century – come Teddy Roosevelt, George Wallace, John Anderson, H. Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Gary Johnson and Kanye West – no minor-party or independent presidential candidate has done anything more than play the role of spoiler.

“I think it's awfully hard,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Raw Story “If you look at it, it's going to be Biden and Trump. So I don't know.”

So while Cheney 2024 is stillborn in the eyes of politicians who know her, some — particularly Democrats — still offer her respect, if not their support.

“Her goal is obviously to stop Trump. Well, I share that,” Welch said. “I'm a Biden supporter, so I'm not sure it's wise for her to run because that may help Trump. I don't know. But just, as a political figure, she is extraordinary.”