Rep. Liz Cheney launched a new campaign ad Thursday, urging that the “truth” about the 2020 election should win and calling on her political rivals to embrace the big lie, calling it a “cancer.”
“As Election Day approaches, I want to speak to citizens of our great state and across the country. America cannot remain free if we give up the truth,” Cheney said, facing the camera while standing in a field of wildflowers. “The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious.”
Cheney is in the Republican primary in Wyoming Tuesday to keep her vacant seat — and finds herself in her very red state over her criticism of former President Donald Trump, the impeachment vote and serving on the Jan. 6 House selection committee faced a major backlash.
She doubled down on those criticisms Thursday, slamming Trump and Republicans, who have been pushing that Monday’s FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago must be somehow corrupt.
“I was embarrassed to hear members of my party attack the integrity of the FBI agents involved in the recent Mar-a-Lago search,” she tweeted. “These are disgusting comments that put the lives of patriotic civil servants at risk.”
Rep. Liz Cheney launched a new campaign ad Thursday, urging that the “truth” about the 2020 election should win and calling on her political rivals to embrace the big lie, calling it a “cancer.”
Cheney calls out former President Donald Trump (left) for his false claims of voter fraud, but doesn’t name her main rival Harriet Hageman (right), instead saying, “My opponents in Wyoming have said the 2020 election was rigged and stolen” and call it a “cancer”
In the ad, she called the ex-president’s false allegations of voter fraud a “door opened by Donald Trump to manipulate Americans into forsaking their principles, sacrificing their liberties to justify violence, the verdicts of our courts and… ignoring the rule of law”.
“This is Donald Trump’s legacy, but it cannot be the future of our nation,” she said. “History has shown us time and time again that these kinds of toxic lies destroy free nations.”
She then turned her ire on her electoral rivals — chiefly Harriet Hageman, the Trump-backed candidate who beats her by 29 points in a poll released Thursday by the University of Wyoming’s Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center.
“Like many candidates in this country, my opponents in Wyoming said the 2020 election was rigged and stolen,” Cheney said. “No one who understands the laws of our nation, no one with an honest, honorable, genuine commitment to our Constitution, would say that.”
“It is a cancer that threatens our great republic,” warned the Republican congresswoman.
“If we don’t condemn these lies, if we don’t hold those responsible accountable. We will excuse this behavior and it will become a feature of all elections,” she said. “America will never be the same.”
Cheney argued that nothing is more important “than preserving the miracle bestowed upon us by God and our Founding Fathers.”
She told voters she would work hard so that generations of Americans would live in a country where there would be “peaceful transitions of power” and no “violent clashes.”
Cheney urged that “millions of Americans across our country—Republicans, Democrats, independents—stand united in the cause of liberty.”
“We are stronger, more committed and more determined than those who are trying to destroy our republic. That is our big task and we will prevail,” she said. “I hope you will join me in this fight,” she said at the end of the ad.
Cheney’s re-election chances depend on independents and Democrats changing their party registration to Republican on Tuesday to vote for her.
But even then, your chances are slim.
Pollsters at the University of Wyoming’s Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center tried to factor in the party switch in Thursday’s poll and spoke to 562 likely voters to get the results.
“Given the unique attention this race is receiving and the attendant increase in voter registration and potential party switching, we decided to conduct this survey on a random sample of all Wyoming residents with cell phones and landlines, and work to identify likely voters in the GOP area code,” said Brian Harnisch, the director of WYSAC.
“If we just look at residents who say they are Republicans and likely voters in the primary, we actually see that Hageman leads by about 50 points,” Harnisch added.
Of all likely voters, 28 percent said they supported Cheney, while 57 percent said they supported Hageman.
Sixty-six percent of those who support Cheney said they do so as an expression of their support for the incumbent Republican.
Of those who support another candidate, 41 percent said they do so to oppose Cheney.
About half of the Democrats polled by pollsters at WYSAC said they plan to switch parties and vote in Tuesday’s GOP primary.
And in that group, Cheney received 98 percent support.
Among likely Republican voters in Tuesday’s primary, Cheney received 15 percent support.
Independent support was divided, with 41 percent supporting Hageman and 43 percent supporting Cheney.
While this might give Cheney a glimmer of hope, the number of independents and Democrats expected to vote is small — about 8 percent of Democrats and 21 percent of independents are expected to make up the GOP primary electorate.
Of the likely voters in the primary, only 8 percent identify as Democrats and 21 percent as independents.
“The math on the back of the napkin says this number could represent up to 20,000 votes in the GOP primary from currently registered Democrats, compared to more than 200,000 votes from registered Republicans,” Harnisch said. “It does not appear at the time of this survey that the numbers for party switching have a significant impact on the outcome of this race.”