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Republican National Committee Will Not Stop Cheney From 2024 Presidential Campaign

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


The Republican National Committee is not going to do anything to stop Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney from campaigning for president.

The RNC has no love for Cheney, but it does not have any way to stop her because of its own policies, MSN reported.

“The party has stated plainly that we will be neutral in the presidential primary in ’24,” Mississippi RNC member Henry Barbour said.

Since Cheney’s loss Tuesday in her bid to keep her House seat in Wyoming, she has said she intends to focus on her work on the Jan. 6 committee through the remainder of 2022 and then decide what comes next in early 2023. She declined to comment for this story.

One Republican strategist said that while pro-Trump members on the RNC may try to rig debate rules to prevent her from participating, there is little they can do to alter state ballot access rules and laws. “If she wants to run as a Republican, there’s nothing they can do to keep her off the ballot.”

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And while Trump and his allies have been gloating over her lopsided defeat against a challenger willing to spread Trump’s election lies, Cheney’s newfound free time come January could wind up making them wish she were still in Congress.

Cheney has hinted at a presidential campaign in 2024.

Cheney talked about how she won her last election by a 73-point margin and how “I could easily have done the same again.”

“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,” she said.

What a hero. But she believes she is even more heroic than that as she compared herself to Abraham Lincoln.

“The great and original champion of our party, Abraham Lincoln, was defeated in elections for the Senate and the House before he won the most important election of all,” she said to her supporters in Jackson, Wyoming. “Lincoln ultimately prevailed, he saved our union, and he defined our obligation as Americans for all of history.”

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“Speaking at Gettysburg of the great task remaining before us, Lincoln said, ‘We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from this earth.’ As we meet here tonight, that remains our greatest and most important task,” she said.

But she was not done. She gave some insight into her future plans and to no one’s surprise they involve her obsession with Trump.

“Freedom must not, cannot, and will not die here,” she said. “We must be very clear-eyed about the threat we face, and about what is required to defeat it. I have said since January 6th, that I will do whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office, and I mean it.”

She gave even more insight when she spoke to NBC News on Wednesday. She was asked point blank if she intended to campaign for president.

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“That’s a decision I’m going to make in the coming months,” she said. “It is something I’m thinking about and I’ll make a decision in the coming months.”

The reaction to Cheney’s defeat was swift, and led by former President Trump.

“Congratulations to Harriet Hageman on her great and very decisive WIN in Wyoming. This is a wonderful result for America, and a complete rebuke of the Unselect Committee of political Hacks and Thugs. Liz Cheney should be ashamed of herself, the way she acted, and her spiteful, sanctimonious words and actions towards others. Now she can finally disappear into the depths of political oblivion where, I am sure, she will be much happier than she is right now. Thank you WYOMING!” he said on Truth Social.

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