In another era, Liz Cheney would have been exactly the kind of candidate Republican leaders would champion. She has the voting record, the pedigree, the fortitude, the eloquence and the smarts they might look for in the party's first female presidential nominee.
But in this, the Era of Trump, traditional political strengths have been supplanted by blind loyalty to the standard bearer. So it is that Wyoming's sole member of Congress has become a pariah in her own party, stripped of her House leadership position, expelled by her state's GOP, widely derided and essentially banished for having the audacity to fight for something conservatives like her used to hold dear: America's democracy.
Because Cheney had the gall to take on Donald Trump and his insurrectionists, the former president has taken on Cheney by promoting her primary challenger. On Tuesday, if the polls are to be believed, Cheney will lose. But shed no tears for Liz Cheney. Her star has never shone more brightly.
She might, as her admirers portend, be sacrificing her political future in order to save the republic. All in all, not a bad trade-off. Then again, perhaps she -- with the help of other democracy lovers -- can salvage them both.
