Liz Cheney Praises Pelosi, Claims GOP House Majority Would Not Be ‘Good For the Country’
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Representative Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) commended Speaker Nancy Pelosi for being a “tremendous leader” during a Tuesday interview, and predicted Republicans would damage the country should they reclaim a House majority in next week’s midterm elections.
Addressing the attack that occurred at Pelosi’s home in San Francisco last week, Cheney praised the veteran lawmaker’s leadership while acknowledging their political differences.
“I want to say a word about Speaker Pelosi. Everyone knows she is a liberal from San Francisco. I am a conservative from Wyoming. There are many, many issues, maybe most issues, on which we disagree. But I think that she is a tremendous leader,” Cheney told PBS’s Judy Woodruff.
“Violence has become part of our political discourse” Cheney continued, warning that the attack on Pelosi’s husband by a mentally ill homeless man suggests the country is headed down “a road we just cannot go down.”
“That’s not who we are in this country…that is disgraceful and as Americans, we have to reject it,” she added, taking issue with the right-wing pundits and lawmakers who downplayed or joked about the attack on Pelosi.
The Wyoming Republican, who split with her party’s leadership and much of its rank-and-file over her response to the January 6 riot, argued that a Republican House majority led by Representative Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) would only drive the country further down the path toward extreme partisanship.
“People just need to understand what it will mean to have a Republican majority in the House of Representatives,” Cheney said. “The people who will be running the House of Representatives in a Republican majority will give authority and power to some of the most radical members of the conference and I don’t think that that’s good for the country.”
Cheney lost her bid for reelection in a landslide against her Trump-endorsed rival, Harriet Hageman in August. Hageman bested the three-term incumbent by a 37-point margin, capturing more than two-thirds of all Republican primary voters. The scion of an immensely wealthy and influential Wyoming political dynasty, Cheney won her previous primary in 2020 with 73 percent of the vote.
Cheney’s political fortunes rapidly changed when she became a vocal critic of Donald Trump following the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Prior to the riot, Cheney voted consistently with Trump’s legislative agenda and even opposed impeaching him during the Ukraine hearings.
However, since January 6 and the Biden administration’s entrance into Washington D.C., Cheney has taken a deeply unpopular stance against Trump, serving as one of only two Republicans on the committee charged with investigating the Capitol riots.
Cheney views next week’s crucial midterm elections as a “fundamental fight for the soul of our country and not just the soul of the Republican Party.”
