The lesson being ignored in the Liz Cheney debacle

Perhaps the big story coming out of Tuesday night’s primaries is that Liz Cheney lost her seat handily to a largely unknown Trumper who gladly parrots the former guy’s election lies. This will largely be taken as an unmistakable sign that Donald Trump’s influence has fully permeated the party, when in reality, Cheney herself was largely an unprincipled politician for much of her career, and ruthlessly went after the same people in her Tea Party years that Trump did as president, all while saying an array of ignorant and offensive things.

What will largely be ignored, and makes for an election night narrative that’s just as important, is the re-nomination of Alaskan Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of the infamously wishy-washy Republican swing votes in the Senate, who voted to uphold Obamacare and to impeach Donald Trump for his role in the Jan 6 insurrection, even if most of her other votes were just as bad as the rest of her party.

While Murkowski is no hero, it’s noteworthy to point out that this isn’t the first time she faced a tough re-election campaign. In the 2010 midterms that saw the Tea Party’s rise to power, she lost her primary to an insane right-winger who she then managed to defeat in the general election as an independent write-in candidate. This time, despite having a strongly financed primary challenger who was backed by Trump, she managed to advance to the general election without breaking a sweat.

While we need to take seriously the number of insurrectionist Republican candidates running for office, this is a clear sign that Trumpers aren’t invincible either. In 2010, there were enough far-right candidates to cost Republicans winnable races in a year that was fairly good to that party overall. In a year when it’s fairly competitive for both parties, donating to Democrats in close House and Senate races really can make the difference against extreme candidates. Let’s do this and win the midterms in 2022.