Houston Chronicle

GOP leader who voted to impeach is targeted

- By Catie Edmondson

WASHINGTON — A group of President Donald Trump’s most strident allies in the House is calling on Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican, to resign from her leadership post after she voted to impeach Trump, dramatizin­g the rifts within the party and setting up an internal feud that could define its future.

Members of the ultraconse­rvative Freedom Caucus, including the chairman, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, as well as Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Matt Gaetz of Florida, are circulatin­g a petition calling on Cheney to step down from her role as chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, arguing that her vote to impeach Trump had

“brought the conference into disrepute and produced discord.”

Cheney was one of 10 Republican­s to break with the party Wednesday and vote to charge the president with “incitement of insurrecti­on” for his role in urging on a mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol.

“One of those 10 cannot be our leader,” Gaetz said in an interview on Fox News’ “Hannity” on Wednesday evening. “It is untenable, unsustaina­ble, and we need to make a leadership change.”

Cheney has brushed aside calls to step down, saying she is “not going anywhere” and calling her break with Trump “a vote of conscience.” Several Republican­s

have begun to circle the wagons around her.

“The entire party would be wise to heed the words of Ronald Reagan: ‘The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally, not a 20 percent traitor,’” said Rep. Michael Burgess, a Republican from Pilot Point in North Texas. “Yesterday, Republican­s jumped on the calls for unity and healing no matter how they decided to vote. Removing Liz from her leadership position would be divisive and a distractio­n we cannot afford.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who also voted to impeach Trump, said Cheney in the last week had “gained immeasurab­le respect” and suggested that it was Republican­s like Jordan who should be shoved aside in the wake of the siege and the impeachmen­t it prompted.

“Since the discussion is opened, though, we may have to also have a discussion about who in our party fomented this, and their roles as ranking members,” he said.

The debate over Cheney’s leadership post reflects the fractures in the Republican Party over Trump, who has demanded total loyalty from his party and, up until recently, largely received it.

While prominent figures have recoiled from Trump’s incendiary brand of politics in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot, worrying that it could spell ruin for their party, a large minority faction remains unwilling to abandon him.

Senate Republican­s are facing just such a dilemma as they contemplat­e how to vote in an impeachmen­t trial that could start as early as next week.

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