That’s the conclusion Ron Brownstein comes to in his new piece about Cheney, and who would dispute it? The party isn’t going to shine a spotlight on Cheney’s criticisms of Trump by letting her share a TV event with him if she runs for president, especially knowing how the hype of “Trump vs. Cheney” confrontation would boost ratings. Making the case to swing voters ahead of the general election that Trump is unfit for office would be the entire point of her candidacy. The RNC won’t provide her with a platform to help her achieve that mission.
If Trump and Cheney are the only two candidates running, the party will simply cancel the primary debates just as the state parties canceled some of their primaries in 2020 to deny anti-Trump Republicans an opportunity to make their voices heard. And even if the RNC didn’t cancel them, it’s a cinch that Trump would refuse to debate her. He’ll deny her a spotlight if the RNC declines to do so, which it wouldn’t.
The only way Cheney potentially faces Trump in a debate is if there’s a surprisingly large field of candidates and the RNC kinda sorta has to hold a debate or two. They can cancel the debates if it’s Trump versus Cheney but not if Ron DeSantis, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and/or numerous others have jumped in and want TV face time with voters. (That doesn’t mean Trump will choose to attend, of course.) In that case, the debates will go forward and GOP leaders will have to contrive a way to exclude Cheney specifically from the event. Which would be easy enough to do. Brownstein:
The general feeling among Republicans I spoke with this week is that the RNC would go to almost absurd lengths to avoid allowing Cheney to appear on the same debate stage as Trump. Kristol predicted that the party might try to exclude her by requiring any candidate participating in a RNC-sanctioned debate to commit to supporting the party’s eventual nominee in the general election—something Cheney’s determination to stop Trump would not allow her to do. (In 2016, the RNC imposed such a loyalty oath primarily out of fear that Trump wouldn’t endorse the nominee if he lost. Trump signed it but characteristically renounced it in the race’s latter stage.)
Even so, it would be difficult for any media organization that sponsors an RNC debate to agree to keep her off the stage. And if Cheney is registering reasonable support in the polls—say 5 percent or more—even state parties might think twice about barring her. “Every other candidate not named Trump is going to want Liz Cheney on the debate stage,” the GOP consultant Alex Conant, the communications director for Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, told me.
Using a polling cut-off to try to exclude her would be tricky for the RNC since it’s a cinch that Cheney will outpoll some MAGA stars, like Josh Hawley. Most of the party hates her but there’s a small minority that loves her, and that minority is large enough to give her five percent of the vote or whatever. A figure like Hawley has to compete with a dozen other figures, starting with Trump, in his “lane” of the GOP whereas Cheney has a lane to herself. She won’t be the lowest-polling candidate out there in a crowded field.
The RNC could simply raise the polling threshold to qualify for the debate to, say, 10 percent, knowing that that would be enough to exclude Cheney. But in that case, only Trump and Ron DeSantis (if he runs) are apt to meet it. And I’m not sure the RNC wants Trump versus DeSantis mano a mano on the debate stage either.
A loyalty pledge is the obvious alternative. All of the other Republican hopefuls will eagerly agree to support the eventual nominee in the general election. Cheney will not. That’s probably enough to disqualify her — although it’d be fascinating to see if any of her opponents ended up going to bat for her for selfish reasons, as Brownstein suggests. All of Trump’s opponents have a reason to want her onstage laying into him; she’s a de facto stalking horse for every other candidate in the field. But would any of them dare piss off MAGA fans by arguing that she should be included in a debate even if she won’t commit to supporting the nominee?
What if she agreed to pledge to support the Republican nominee provided that it’s anyone *except* Trump? That would make things interesting.
She might not even agree to that, though. Remember, she said recently that she’d have a hard time supporting Ron DeSantis due to his coziness with Trump and MAGA. Plus, she has lots of new fans in the Democratic Party, even at the highest levels:
.@WHCOS Ron Klain commends Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) for upholding her oath to the Constitution, instead of swearing "fealty" to Donald Trump:
"I respect enormously [Liz Cheney's] commitment to democracy … instead of her commitment to one man." pic.twitter.com/wIKog8CyQQ
— The Recount (@therecount) August 17, 2022
Joe Biden himself phoned her after her defeat on Tuesday night to offer his condolences. Let me seize the opportunity then to double down on my prediction that she’s going to end up serving in his administration next year as some sort of “senior advisor on protecting democracy” or whatever. Trying to coopt her and her small but loyal Republican fan base is an obvious move for Dems ahead of 2024, and Ron Klain knows it.
Besides, an administration job would make a nice side gig for her along with her new day job: It turns out she just filed with the FEC to “reorganize her campaign account – flush with $7 million as of the end of July – to be a leadership PAC called ‘The Great Task.'” Presumably that PAC will focus on electing Republican candidates who refuse to endorse Trump’s election lies. Assuming there are any of them left.
All of that said, Amanda Carpenter is wise to warn Cheney and her fans not to get ahead of themselves on her future plans. She’s still working on an important assignment this year and any 2024 talk is destined to complicate that assignment.
As co-chair of the [January 6] committee, Cheney has done more to explain and focus the nation on what Trump did—he “summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack”—than anyone on the national stage. And the committee has much still to do in the months ahead. But, the moment she’s viewed as a candidate rather than a co-chair of the committee, she’ll be chased through halls of Congress with inane questions about fundraising, polls, strategy, staff, and outrage-of-the-day minutiae. People will quit caring about what she’s saying and start judging what she’s wearing and evaluating her “likability.” Or worse, they will cast doubt on whether she is co-leading the committee with integrity or steering it toward conclusions intended to further her political ambitions.
If Cheney wants to be a presidential candidate or mount another effort to defeat Trump in 2024, she should. Later. Those questions should be decisively, definitively deferred until she has packed up her congressional office.
Yeah, her presidential candidacy is a topic better left untouched until next January (…he said, at the end of a post about a Trump/Cheney primary debate).
I’ll leave you with three clips below on the latest Cheney drama, in which Harriet Hageman accuses her of having never conceded the race on Tuesday night when in reality it looks like there was some sort of phone glitch that led to part of Cheney’s message being cut off. There’d be no reason for her to call Hageman to say “Hi, Harriet” and then to say nothing else. Besides, since when do Trump fans have a problem with refusing to concede? Exit question: Would having Cheney onstage with Trump during a multi-candidate debate really cause him that much of a problem for him? How long would she get to speak during a two-hour debate if there were, say, 12 people competing? Four minutes, maybe?
Hageman: There wasn’t a phone call… She called and left a very brief two second message.. All she said was hello Harriet.. She didn’t call and discuss any kind of concession.. pic.twitter.com/rlYiYaG2pS
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 18, 2022
EXCLUSIVE: I’ve obtained audio from the Cheney campaign of the concession voicemail Rep. Liz Cheney’s left for Harriet Hageman last night.
The audio contradicts the narrative Hageman gave on Hannity tonight that she “didn’t address any kind of concession or anything else.” https://t.co/SZTxyyEmTn pic.twitter.com/LodE9YVVIW
— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) August 18, 2022
HAGEMAN’s campaign has sent their own video to me showing that the voicemail audio only got “Howdy Harriet.” The voicemail had more time on it but that’s all the audio that got through to Hageman.
Perhaps technical / cell service issues at play over Cheney concession message pic.twitter.com/JTtICQ7eXi
— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) August 18, 2022
