WASHINGTON, Aug 18 (AFP): Republican scion Liz Cheney's primary defeat to a hardline Trumpist rival underlines the dramatic shift the party has undergone under the former president as he pulls it away from mainstream conservatism towards the politics of personality.
The congresswoman's loss to Harriet Hageman on Tuesday-ending her hopes of seeking a fourth term in her safe Wyoming seat-was a definitive rebuke for her opposition to Donald Trump.
Cheney's voting record aligned with Trump's positions 93 per cent of the time during his presidency, but the sin that saw her excommunicated was her criticism of the 76-year-old head of a movement that brooks almost no dissent.
"I think the Republican Party today is in very bad shape, and I think that we have a tremendous amount of work to do," Cheney told NBC the morning after her defeat.
"I think it could take several election cycles, but the country has got to have a Republican Party that is actually based on substance, based on principles, based on a belief.
"A party that has instead embraced Donald Trump, embraced his cult of personality, is looking the other way."
Modern Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush have dealt with critics from within the party, but personality disputes were largely secondary to fiscal prudence, lower taxes, free trade, limited federal power and a strong military.
Now, a sizable portion of the "Grand Old Party"-in Congress as much as in the grassroots-has coalesced around a leader who has little use for the strictures of traditional conservatism. "The Republican Party isn't the 'Party of Reagan' and it's not even the 'Party of Nixon,'" Aron Solomon, chief legal analyst for lawyers' marketing agency Esquire Digital, told the news agency.
