Ron Brownstein is an incredibly shrewd political analyst, but this passage in his column about Liz Cheney’s political prospects strikes me as very fanciful:
In public polls, as many as one-fourth of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents reject Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen, or criticize his efforts to overturn the result and his role in the January 6 insurrection. The share of Trump critics is usually slightly higher among Republicans holding at least a four-year college degree—a group that was notably cooler toward him during his first run to the nomination in 2016 and that sharply moved away from the GOP in the 2018 and 2020 elections. Some of those voters have since soured on President Joe Biden and the Democrats, but Cheney could spend months reminding them why they rejected Trump in the first place. “Especially among college-educated and donor-class Republicans, I think she continues to just chip away at Trump,” Kristol said.
Whit Ayres, a longtime GOP pollster, believes that the core of Republican-leaning voters hostile to Trump is smaller—only about one in 10, rather than the roughly one in five suggested by some poll questions. But he believes a Cheney candidacy could reach beyond that circle to raise doubts among a much bigger group: Republicans who are neither hard-core Trump supporters or opponents, but are focused mostly on winning in 2024. Although Cheney might appeal solely to the thin sliver of die-hard Trump opponents “with a prophetic-moral case … about the importance of devotion to our democratic institutions and the U.S. Constitution,” Ayres said, that larger group might respond to “a very practical utilitarian case” that Trump has too much baggage to win a general election.
What this leaves out is that even voters hostile to Trump might not be enamored of a Republican politician who eagerly cooperated with Nancy Pelosi on the January 6 committee and whose political base is largely the mainstream media.
Cheney’s potential electoral audience is tiny, and as I argue in Politico today, it would make no sense for her to run for president.