Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) said Thursday that he would not be throwing his weight behind Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) if she de...
Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) said Thursday that he would not be throwing his weight behind Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) if she decided to mount a presidential bid in 2024.
Romney was among the seven Republican senators who voted to convict former President Donald Trump — the others were Richard Burr (NC), Bill Cassidy (LA), Susan Collins (ME), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Ben Sasse (NE), and Pat Toomey (PA) — and Cheney was among the House Republicans who voted with Democrats to impeach, but the Utah Senator argued a presidential bid would be at best ill-advised.
Sen. Mitt Romney, who voted twice to convict Trump, is not on board with a Liz Cheney presidential campaign. From @Deseret: https://t.co/s0a8TTBtWe pic.twitter.com/0kbzQa6Lc7
— Byron York (@ByronYork) August 19, 2022
According to Deseret News, Romney predicted that a Cheney presidential run would likely be doomed from the outset — and said that he would not encourage the recently-ousted Wyoming congresswoman to run.
“I’m not going to encourage anyone to run for president. I’ve done that myself, and that’s something I’m not doing again. I don’t know if she really wants to do that. She would not become the nominee if she were to run. I can’t imagine that would occur,” Romney began, suggesting that even if Cheney were to run, it was unlikely that her campaign would survive the Republican primary.
He acknowledged that Cheney could run for other reasons, but added, “I’m not in collaboration with that effort.”
Cheney’s re-election campaign came to an abrupt halt when she was blown out in her primary last week — bested by Trump-backed Harriet Hageman — and in the days that followed she told NBC that she was considering a run for president.
“I believe that Donald Trump continues to pose a very grave threat and risk to our republic. And I think that defeating him is going to require a broad and united front of Republicans, Democrats and independents, and that’s what I intend to be a part of,” she said.
Romney, among others, suggested that Cheney lost her primary solely because she opposed Trump. “My party has changed a great deal over the last decade. It will change again over the next 10 years. I can’t tell you how, but I think we’ll have more voices than one at some point.”
“But right now one voice, and that’s President Trump’s voice, is the loudest and the strongest and bucking him is something people will do at their peril,” he added.
But as Marc Thiessen wrote in The Washington Post, for some Republicans the issue might be a little bit more complicated. “Cheney lost because her constituents saw that she cared more about fighting Trump than fighting Biden,” he wrote. “More concerned with waging a civil war within the [GOP] than the inflation that is forcing her voters to choose between … gas and food.”
Quote: "Cheney lost because her constituents saw that she cared more about fighting Trump than fighting Biden…more concerned with waging a civil war within the [GOP]than the inflation that is forcing her voters to choose between…gas and food." https://t.co/qJyYEpVK6l
— Brit Hume (@brithume) August 19, 2022
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