There are many reasons why Liz Cheney’s Senate campaign failed to get any traction in Wyoming. As a Washington insider who spent her professional life in Northern Virginia, she faced inherent challenges running an insurgent campaign against a well-liked senator. She never was able to secure support from other Republican elected officials, relying instead on past allies from the Bush-Cheney presidential campaigns. Her all-too-public family feuds were a painful distraction to running an orderly, focused campaign.

But most significantly, Cheney found that her calling card in public life as a spokesperson for a muscular, hawkish foreign policy just wasn’t playing politically—even in a Republican primary in a deeply conservative state. Cheney entered the race as a go-to conservative expert on the Middle East, but she barely talked about foreign policy on the campaign trail. Voters were more interested in her views on gay marriage than her bromides against the Obama administration over Benghazi.