Tuesday Primary Preview: So Long, Liz Cheney & Sarah Palin?

Once upon a time, that would’ve all been good news.

Tonight, Liz Cheney’s congressional career most likely ends. Polls show MAGA loon Harriet Hageman and her amazing technicolor dream coat beating Cheney like she insulted her momma. This week's University of Wyoming poll has Hagerman ahead 29 points. There was talk about Wyoming’s several dozen Democrats crossing over to save Cheney, who’s terrible but not Marjorie Taylor Greene psychotic. However, Wyoming Democrats were only 23 percent of the 2020 electorate so the math is bleak.

Hageman, by the way, is an opportunistic fraud who tried to block Donald Trump from receiving the 2016 Republican nomination. Apparently, he won her over with his coups.

“Liz Cheney's Trump-backed primary opponent is actually all five Kids in the Hall members playing the same character”

— Frank Lesser (@Frank Lesser) 1660515532 

It’s quite a fall for Cheney, who lost her House leadership position last year. People obsessed with missing the point keep reminding us that Cheney is not a liberal — the hell you say! — or even a faux moderate like Susan Collins. This actually reinforces the fact that Cheney’s only “sin" is holding Donald Trump accountable for staging a coup and inciting an attack against Congress. This has nothing do with policy. She didn’t go "woke.”

Trump’s spineless lap dog Kevin McCarthy not only endorsed Hageman but he went to Wyoming Monday to campaign against Cheney. Fox News reporter Rich Edson asked McCarthy why he’d turned on Cheney. His response was pathetic.

MCCARTHY: The principle philosophy is less government, an idea of freedom and the aspect – just the concepts of a country that’s conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that we’re all ...

Even Edson couldn’t listen to this bullshit without interrupting.

EDSON: But hasn’t she fit that bill over the last several years?

MCCARTHY: I think her whole focus has been different. Her whole focus has been against one individual, whether she has information or not, instead of focusing on her district itself.

Cheney’s just so obsessed with Trump, like some common Lifetime movie stalker, that she’s forgotten about her district! It’s tragic, really. McCarthy is such a repulsive liar. He knows why Trump wants Cheney out of Congress and it’s not so they can replace her with a 24/7 Wyoming crusader.

Cheney’s campaign clapped back to McCarthy’s rambling: “It’s really difficult to understand that word salad ... Was there an actual sentence in there somewhere?”

Monday, Trump took time away from his espionage troubles and held a tele-rally for Hageman. He told viewers, "This is your chance to send a message to the RINOs (Republican in Name Only) and the fake news media, the radical left lunatics, that we have unfortunately too many in our country, and you’re going to elect Harriet, and you’re going to tell warmonger Liz Cheney – so bad, so negative – Liz, you’re fired.”

Hey, remember when Donald Trump had his own TV show almost 20 years ago with that catch phrase that got old after a few months of everyone saying it? He’s like Al Bundy talking about scoring four touchdowns in a single high school football game, except Al never literally became president.

Trump would also love to punish Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska but he’ll remain unsatisfied, like Melania. Former Alaska Department of Administration Commissioner Kelly Tshibaka, a complete wackadoodle, won’t unseat Murk, but not because the actual moderate Republican’s anti-Trump positions are popular in Alaska. The state has ranked-choice voting. FiveThirtyEight explains the confusing process more in depth, but bottom line, Murkowski isn’t going anywhere soon.

Sarah Palin, however, is expected to lose the special election to fill the late Rep. Don Young’s House seat. Alaska voters don’t have a high opinion of Palin, who cut and ran during her only term as governor. She’s also barely coherent most of the time and maybe that matters in Alaska. (We’ll soon see if it does in Georgia.) 

 According to FiveThirtyEight, the real suspense is over who finishes second.

But remember — general elections in Alaska now use ranked-choice voting, so who finishes second matters a great deal. (This is why, in the waning days of the campaign, [Nick] Begich and Palin have been attacking each other while [Democratic former state Rep. Mary] Peltola has sailed above the fray.) The third-place finisher will be eliminated and their votes redistributed to whomever their voters ranked second. And that could affect who wins. If Palin finishes third, we’d expect virtually all of her votes to go to Begich, her fellow Republican. Indeed, in this scenario, according to the poll , Begich would win 55 percent to 45 percent.

But if Begich finishes third, a fair number of his voters might flock to Peltola. Despite having Trump’s endorsement , Palin remains an unpopular figure in Alaska after her tumultuous governorship , even among Republicans (64 percent of likely voters in the poll had a negative opinion of her). That could be enough to do something that hasn’t happened in 14 years : elect a Democrat in Alaska. According to the poll , Peltola would edge out Palin 51 percent to 49 percent in a head-to-head.

Sheesh, I like ranked-choice voting in concept, but in practice, I’m like Charlie from "It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia" trying to determine if "Pepe Silva" exists. 

I’ll meet you back here tomorrow with a Wyoming/Alaska primary race recap.

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