In article <svbqr5$1qbm5$48@news.freedyn.de>
<governor.swill@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is what happens to bitchy fat broads who stab honest men in the back.
>

(CNN)The surprising story out of Tuesday's Republican House
primary in Wyoming wasn't that Rep. Liz Cheney lost. The pre-
election polls all showed her losing handily to eventual winner
Harriet Hageman.

The big news from the Cowboy State was her margin of defeat.
Cheney's loss is one of the biggest on record for a House
incumbent and is part of a pattern this primary season pointing
to former President Donald Trump's strength within the
Republican Party.
Cheney's defeat appears to be the second worst for a House
incumbent in the last 60 years, when you look at races featuring
only one incumbent. As of Wednesday afternoon, she trailed
Hageman by 37.4 points, which is just worse than California Rep.
Marty Martinez's loss by 37.2 points to fellow Democrat Hilda
Solis in a 2000 blanket primary.

Assuming the Wyoming result margin stands, South Carolina
Republican Bob Inglis would then be the only House incumbent in
the last 60 years to lose by a wider margin than Cheney. He lost
by 41 points in a 2010 primary runoff to Trey Gowdy.

The Inglis comparison to Cheney's loss is notable for two
reasons.

The first is that Inglis' lopsided defeat occurred in a runoff,
with only about 77,000 people voting. That was down from the
about 87,000 who voted in the first round for the upstate South
Carolina seat and far less than the roughly 217,000 who voted in
the fall election in that district.

Cheney can't blame low turnout for her historic defeat. About
170,000 votes have been counted in Wyoming as of Wednesday
afternoon. That's not too far off from the approximately 201,000
Wyomingites who voted in the last midterm general election.
Cheney's loss was no fluke.

The second reason the comparison is notable is that Inglis had
alienated the Republican base by opposing the 2007 Iraq troop
surge, voting for the so-called bank bailout in 2008 and
believing in man-made climate change.
In Cheney's case, the offense in voters' minds was that she
voted to impeach Trump last year and seemed to relish her
opposition to him.

Beyond Cheney
Cheney's loss wasn't the only historic defeat this primary
season.

GOP Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina, who also voted to impeach
Trump, got blown out in his primary in June. He pulled in a mere
24.6% of the vote while losing to Russell Fry. That percentage
appears to be the worst performance for a House incumbent in a
partisan primary with just one incumbent running since 1992.

Indeed, all six House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump and
ran for reelection faced tough battles. Four of them (including
Cheney and Rice) lost their primaries, which is extremely
unusual. Just 2% of other House Republicans who have run for
reelection this season have lost primaries, and those defeated
lawmakers were either scandal-plagued or lost to a fellow
incumbent because of redistricting.

Perhaps, more notable is that none of the aforementioned six
impeachment-backing Republicans got a majority of votes cast for
GOP candidates in their primaries. Since 1956, House incumbents
have averaged more than 90% of the primary vote.
All of these historical anomalies related to those who voted to
impeach Trump help us understand Trump's strength with the
Republican Party today.

It makes Cheney's postelection goal of stopping Trump from
regaining power a tough one. (She told NBC's "Today" show on
Wednesday that she was "thinking about" running for president in
2024, something Trump is also considering.)

The former President is averaging about 50% of the national GOP
primary vote for 2024 right now. That's the best for any
nonincumbent Republican at this point in the modern primary era.

Cheney's favorable rating among Republicans nationally is 13%,
which probably makes her a terrible messenger to GOP voters.

The truth is that Republicans are inclined to believe that
President Joe Biden didn't win the 2020 election (which he did).
Trump's favorable rating with this group is somewhere north of
80% in most polls. But if Trump is going to be beaten in a GOP
primary, it'll very likely be by someone who has adopted most of
his message. Someone like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

If Trump is defeated in a general election, it will almost
certainly be by a Democrat.

An effort led by a Republican who doesn't like Trump would be
speaking to a very small part of the US population.

<https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/17/politics/liz-cheney-worst-defeat-
house-incumbent/index.html>