“I think that there should be a line of Republicans around the block standing up to defend her,” Michael Wood, who won just 3% of the vote in a Republican primary in Texas earlier this month, told the MSNBC network. “This is probably the bravest woman in the western hemisphere. “She’s a modern-day Margaret Thatcher, an iron lady, and she’s being stabbed in the back not over policy differences; she’s being stabbed in the back because she won’t lie. It’s horrible what’s happening and I don’t know if I want to be in a party that doesn’t want somebody in it who’s speaking the truth.”... Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “The thing that’s hard to remember is Cheney is an arch-conservative. She’s a hard-edged, small government, lower taxes figure and a leading voice on national defense but the Republican party is no longer organized along the axis of ideology; it’s organized along the axis of cult of personality. “This is a low point for the Republican party. It’s embarrassing and really gives you a sense of how unmoored it is from the issues facing the country.”