Former Representative Liz Cheney, who has emerged as perhaps the most vocal and visible conservative critic of former President Donald J. Trump, suggested on Friday night that a new political party might need to be created to replace the Republican Party if he is defeated.
Ms. Cheney, who represented Wyoming in Congress and served in the House Republican leadership but recently crossed party lines to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president, said that the party she has devoted her life to may not be able to survive as a viable institution after being effectively hijacked by Mr. Trump.
“Whether it’s organizing a new party — look, it’s hard for me to see how the Republican Party, given what it has done, can make the argument convincingly or credibly that people ought to vote for Republican candidates until it really recognizes what it’s done,” Ms. Cheney said at the Cap Times Idea Fest in Madison, Wis.
“There is certainly going to be a big shift, I think, in how our politics work,” she continued. “I don’t know exactly what that will look like. I don’t think it will just simply be, well, the Republican Party is going to put up a new slate of candidates and off to the races. I think far too much has happened that’s too damaging.”
Ms. Cheney has been at the forefront of the opposition to Mr. Trump since he tried to overturn the 2020 election and riled up a mob of supporters that then attacked 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 expelled from the party leadership and then defeated in a Republican primary by a candidate endorsed by Mr. Trump.
The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who also recently said he would vote for Ms. Harris, Ms. Cheney has supported only Republican presidential candidates since casting her first ballot for Ronald Reagan in 1984. But her estrangement from her party was evident when she was asked if she still called herself a Republican and she said, “I’m a conservative.”
By chance, Ms. Cheney was speaking at the same time that Ms. Harris was also in Madison, holding a rally across town. Ms. Cheney said she had spoken with the vice president since announcing her support and hinted that she might participate in the campaign in some way.
“I have spoken to Vice President Harris,” she said, but would not reveal details. Asked if she would appear with Ms. Harris, she said, “Look, I’m going to do everything that I can because I think it’s so important, so stay tuned.”
She added: “We had a very good discussion, and I believe that she knows this coalition that’s coming together to support her is such a broad one and such an unusual one.” She noted that she had taken a picture of a news caption she saw on MSNBC that said “Dick Cheney and Taylor Swift Support Harris.”
Ms. Cheney said she would not vote for Wisconsin Republicans like Representative Derrick Van Orden, who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 though he said he did not go in the building, or Eric Hovde, a Trump-endorsed businessman who is challenging Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat. She suggested Democrats should win the House to prevent Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican representatives from trying to reverse another Trump defeat.
“Makes me very sad that this is the case, but the Republicans have shown that they will not certify the results if Donald Trump is not the victor,” she said, “so I think it’s really important that Mike Johnson not be the speaker of the House on Jan. 6, 2025.”
The notion of forming a new party has precedent in American history, although it has been a while since one memorably challenged the existing order. The Republican Party itself was founded in the 1850s out of the wreckage of failed political parties. But the structural and political obstacles to forming a new party in the modern era are daunting. No effort to create a new party strong enough to seriously take on the existing Democratic and Republican parties has succeeded so far.
Ms. Cheney was not announcing the beginning of such an effort but instead ruminating on the implications of a Trump defeat. “The party itself really has rejected the Constitution in the name of supporting Trump,” she said.
That “may well” necessitate a new party, she added, “because, again, so much of the Republican Party today has allowed itself to become a tool for this really unstable man. It certainly has moved away from standing for anything of substance, anything of policy. We’re going to have to have some entity that actually can be making the case for the kind of conservative causes that I believe in.”
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