Former Rep. Liz Cheney closed her first appearance on the campaign trail alongside Vice President Kamala Harris in Wisconsin on Thursday with a plea for voters to support Democratic presidential nominee to “help us right the ship of our democracy.”
Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and a three-term Republican House member from Wyoming who served in her party’s congressional leadership, campaigning for a Democrat for president would have been inconceivable before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. But by now, it almost seemed a forgone conclusion.
“We must defeat Donald Trump on Nov. 5,” Cheney said, before referencing her campaign efforts supporting her father and President George W. Bush two decades ago.
“In that election 20 years ago, when we were campaigning in Wisconsin and all across the country, we were campaigning as compassionate conservatives. What Jan. 6 shows us is that there is not an ounce, not an ounce of compassion in Donald Trump,” she said. “He is petty, he is vindictive, and he is cruel, and Donald Trump is not fit to lead this good and great nation.”
Cheney served as the Democrat-appointed vice chair of the select committee set up under then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to investigate Jan. 6 and then-President Donald Trump’s role in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In so doing, she effectively ended her career as an elected Republican.
“Liz Cheney really is a leader who puts country above party and above self, a true patriot,” Harris said, taking the stage after Cheney.
Trump, for his part, highlighted the margin by which Cheney lost her 2022 reelection primary to Republican Harriet Hageman, the Trump supporter now holds the state’s at-large seat, calling her a “low IQ War Hawk” in a late-night social media post.
“Her father, Dick, was a leader of our ridiculous journey into the Middle East, where Trillions of Dollars were spent, millions of people were killed – and for what? NOTHING!” Trump wrote.
In her speech in Ripon, Wis., near the birthplace of the GOP, Cheney stressed that her policy and worldview were still as conservative as ever.
“I am a Ronald Reagan conservative. I believe in limited government, I believe in low taxes, I believe in a strong national defense, and I believe that the private sector is the engine of growth of our economy,” Cheney said. “I believe that the family and not the government is the most important structure in our society.”
In fact, in the first three years of Trump’s presidency, she voted with his position 94 percent of the time, according to CQ Vote Studies. Even in the last full year he was in office, Cheney took Trump’s side on 86 percent of the votes in which the president’s position was clear.
A PBS News/NPR/Marist poll released Thursday afternoon found that 67 percent of the likely voters surveyed said preserving democracy was “a deciding factor” in how they would vote in 2024, with Harris appearing to do better with those voters than Trump.
Cheney noted that she was born in the Badger State while her parents were graduate students at the University of Wisconsin. The Harris campaign is hoping her appearance will help in the key swing state, which is also home to a Senate matchup between Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Republican Eric Hovde.
The Harris campaign has been deploying Republicans who worked for Trump and for former Vice President Mike Pence in battleground states across the country. Earlier this week, the campaign released an ad narrated by Olivia Troye, who was Pence’s national security adviser.
Next week, as CNN first reported, Cheney is expected to join former Trump administration aides Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews for an event in Montgomery County, Pa., with the democracyFIRST PAC.
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