Former Rep. Liz Cheney, who has emerged as perhaps the most vocal and visible conservative critic of former President Donald J. Trump, suggested Friday night that a new political party might need to be created to replace the Republican Party if Mr. Trump is defeated.
Cheney, who was elected to Congress from Wyoming and served as a member of the House Republican leadership but recently crossed party lines to support Vice President Kamala Harris for president, said the party she dedicated her life to may not survive as a viable organization after being effectively taken over by Trump.
“Whether they form a new party or not, unless the Republican Party really acknowledges what they’ve done in the past, I’m not sure they can make a persuasive or credible case that Americans should vote for Republican candidates,” Cheney said at the Cap Times Ideas Fest in Madison, Wisconsin.
“I think there’s definitely going to be a big shift in the way we do politics,” she continued. “I don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like. I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as the Republican Party putting up a new candidate and running the election. I think there’s just too much going on and it’s just too damaging.”
Cheney has been at the forefront of the opposition to Trump since he sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election and incited a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. She served as vice chair of the bipartisan House Select Committee that investigated the events of Jan. 6, and paid the price by being ousted from party leadership and losing the Republican primary to a candidate supported by Trump.
Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who also recently said she would be voting for Harris, has supported only Republican presidential candidates since she first voted for President Ronald Reagan in 1984. But her estrangement from the party was clear when, when asked if she still considered herself a Republican, she replied, “I’m a conservative.”
Coincidentally, Harris was also holding a rally in Madison at the same time Cheney was speaking, and Cheney said she has spoken with the vice president since announcing her endorsement and indicated she may become involved in the campaign in some capacity.
“I’ve spoken with Vice President Harris,” she said, without providing details. When asked if she would appear with Harris, she replied, “I think it’s very important, so I’m going to do everything I can to help. Stay tuned.”
She added, “We had a very good conversation, and I think she knows that this coalition that has come together to support Harris is very broad and unusual,” revealing that she had taken a photo of a news caption she saw on MSNBC that read, “Dick Cheney and Taylor Swift Endorse Harris.”
Cheney said she would not vote for Rep. Derrick Van Alden, a Wisconsin Republican who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 but said he did not enter the building, or Eric Hovde, a Trump-backed businessman who is challenging Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin. She suggested Democrats need to win the House to prevent House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans from trying to overturn Trump’s defeat.
“It’s really unfortunate that we’ve reached this point, but Republicans have indicated that they will not certify the results of the election unless Donald Trump wins,” she said. “So I think it’s really important that Mike Johnson is not Speaker of the House on January 6, 2025.”
The idea of founding a new party has precedent in American history, but it has been a long time since one emerged that impressively challenged the existing order. The Republican Party itself was founded in the 1850s from the ashes of a failed party. But the structural and political obstacles to founding a new party in modern times are significant. Attempts to create a new party strong enough to seriously challenge the incumbent Democratic and Republican parties have so far failed.
Rather than announcing the launch of such an effort, Cheney was mulling over the impact of Trump’s defeat: “The party itself has rejected the Constitution in the name of supporting Trump,” she said.
That means “we may well need a new political party,” she added, “because so much of the Republican Party today has become the tool of this very unstable man. The Republican Party has certainly strayed from anything of substance and from standing for policy. We’re going to need an organization that can actually advocate for the kind of conservative ideals that I believe in.”
