Hard year for 10 House Republicans
Lawmakers paying a price after voting to impeach Trump
WASHINGTON — The 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump did so with the same conviction — that a president of their party deserved to be charged with inciting insurrection Jan. 6, 2021 — and the same hope — that his role in doing so would finally persuade the GOP to repudiate him.
But in the year since the deadliest attack on the Capitol in centuries, none of the 10 lawmakers have been able to avoid the consequences of a fundamental miscalculation about the direction of their party. The former president is very much the leader of the Republicans, and it is those who stood against him whom the party has thrust into the role of pariah.
Since they cast their impeachment votes Jan. 13, Reps. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois have announced their retirements amid death threats from voters and hostility from colleagues. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming has gone from a star in the House Republican leadership to an exiled party gadfly and truth teller.
Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Peter Meijer of Michigan and Fred Upton of Michigan have Trump-endorsed primary challengers on their heels and uncertain political futures. Four others — John Katko of New York, Dan Newhouse of Washington, Tom Rice of South Carolina and David Valadao of California — have stayed silent in the apparent hope that the entire episode will be forgotten.
The fate of the 10 over the past year has offered a bracing reality check about the nature of today’s Republican Party, one that has fully embraced the lie of a stolen election and its main purveyor, and sidelined the few remaining members who have dared to publicly question Trump or his actions.
“There’s been this waiting game and an arbitrage between an individual’s political future and the trajectory of that guy, assuming the apex has passed,” Meijer said, referring to Trump. “The view among some was that this would be essentially a self-correcting issue” and that Trump’s power would fade.
“I think that’s proven overly optimistic,” Meijer added.
The 10 could be forgiven for believing that their votes last January would not leave them so exposed.
In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol riot, some of Trump’s most stalwart allies quit the government in disgust.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, voted against impeachment but declared, “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.”
The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, orchestrated Trump’s acquittal after a hasty Senate impeachment trial. But he had let it be known that he considered the president culpable and said as much in a scathing speech afterward: “There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”
But the rhetorical cover fire proved as ephemeral as it was useless.
Gonzalez, deluged with threats and fearing for the safety of his wife and children, announced in September that he would not seek reelection — and called Trump “a cancer for the country.”
Kinzinger, who announced his retirement in October, has faced similar threats. But he has turned his opposition to Trump into a capstone of his career, defying Republican leaders to join the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
“The 2020 election was not stolen,” he said in a video message Wednesday for the anniversary of Jan. 6. “Joe Biden won, and Donald Trump lost. We have to admit it. But the leadership of the Republican Party won’t. They lied to the American people and continue to ... echo the conspiracy theories that line their pockets.”
None of the 10 have fallen in the Republican firmament as Cheney nor risen so high in the esteem of many in both parties who fear and loathe Trump. The daughter of a former vice president who was once the embodiment of confrontational conservatism, for better or worse, Cheney started 2021 as the chair of the House Republican Conference, a political knife fighter believed by many to be destined for the speakership.
Her vote to impeach and her outspoken denunciations of the lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” cost her dearly. She was ousted from her leadership post, ejected from the Wyoming Republican Party and targeted repeatedly by the former president, who has tried to unite Wyoming voters around the primary opponent he has endorsed, Harriet Hageman.
Cheney has soldiered on, becoming vice chair of the House select committee investigating the riot.
Looking back, Cheney said that her fall from Republican leadership was inevitable as long as she had to share the stage with McCarthy, whose brief denunciation of Trump after Jan. 6 quickly gave way to a resumption of fealty.
“It was increasingly clear that staying as conference chair was going to require me to perpetuate the lie about the election,” Cheney said. “I was simply not willing to look the other way and accept what he did.”