OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Wyoming “Republican” Rep. Liz Cheney, who lost her primary and has no reason to not side with the Democrats, anymore, is siding with them again.
She will join Democrats in presenting a bill that seriously limits the ability to challenge electors and the role of the vice president, Fox News reported.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Thursday on the House floor that the bill could get a vote as early as next week. The two lawmakers had not introduced the bill as of Friday afternoon, but it’s been clear for some time that a bill is in the works.
Both Cheney, who lost her primary election in August and won’t return to Congress next year, and Lofgren sit on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In July, the two lawmakers indicated that legislation to amend the Electoral Count Act of 1887 was on the way.
“As Greg Jacob, the Vice President’s General Counsel testified, President Trump had no legal basis to pressure the Vice President to reject or refuse to count electoral votes. The Select Committee has been considering legislative recommendations based on its findings concerning the January 6 attack and will share those soon. These will include a bipartisan approach to the Electoral Count Act.” The Congress members said.
One of the regulations in the bill would make it tougher for Congress members to raise objections to electors, which would really affect Democrats who routinely raise objections whenever a Republican wins the presidency.
The way it is currently structured, an objection can be raised if one member of the House and one member of the Senate both object. With the new provision it would require one third of all members of the House and Senate to object during the joint session.
It would also remove the mainly ceremonial role of the vice president from presiding over the session and would give the vice president no procedural role.
It would have the Congress members role be to mainly accept the electors with and if major issues arise it would take a super majority to correct them.
After her primary defeat Cheney was torched on Twitter by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
Cheney took to Twitter to go after Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz by calling him “chameleon.”
“Understanding @tedcruz isn’t difficult. He lacks principle and has always been a chameleon who will say anything, anytime. He thinks he’s so smart no one can see through him. Ted, we can. All of us can,” Cheney wrote.
Cheney’s tweet was in response to Cruz’s comments earlier this week, where he suggested he’d be in favor of a “complete housecleaning” of the FBI.
Understanding @tedcruz isn’t difficult. He lacks principle and has always been a chameleon who will say anything, anytime. He thinks he’s so smart no one can see through him. Ted, we can. All of us can.
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) August 30, 2022
Cruz hit back at Cheney by tweeting a GIF depicting a scene from the TV show Mad Men that was captioned, “I don’t think about you at all.”
https://t.co/MBl2pXovPL pic.twitter.com/TQCxh5OAnt
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) August 30, 2022
Earlier this month, Cheney suffered a blistering defeat when she lost the Wyoming GOP primary to Trump-backed Harriet Hageman.
With just months left before she leaves office, Cheney remains fixated on using her seat on the Democrat-led January 6 committee to go after former President Donald Trump.
Politico reported that Cheney is scheduled to “headline the American Enterprise Institute’s annual Constitution Day Lecture on Monday, Sept. 19. The Wyoming Republican’s speech will focus on why Abraham Lincoln’s ‘call for a patriotism grounded in ‘reverence to the Constitution’ is essential in protecting our inheritance of liberty, and why we must resist the rise of a ‘mobocratic spirit.’”
This is not a coincidence.
Cheney used her concession speech to suggest she may run for president in 2024 to “stop” Trump.
“The path was clear. But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic,” she said. “That was a path I could not and would not take.”
Cheney teased a 2024 run when she noted that Abraham Lincoln lost elections for the House and Senate “before he won the most important election of all” by winning the presidency.
Liz Cheney is joining us live. @SavannahGuthrie is speaking with her about the defeat in the Wyoming Republican primary, her take in the message the voters were sending, and where she goes from here. pic.twitter.com/xrpOMs5fAv
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) August 17, 2022
She told the TODAY Show she was “thinking about” joining the 2024 Republican presidential race.
“That’s a decision that I’m going to make in the coming months, and I’m not going to make any announcements here this morning. But it is something that I am thinking about, and I’ll make a decision in the coming months,” Cheney responded when asked if she had considered a White House bid.
