House Republicans oust Cheney
What happened
House Republicans voted to purge Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming from their leadership ranks this week, ousting their No. 3 leader in retaliation for Cheney’s ongoing criticism of former President Trump and his claim that last year’s election was stolen. “If you want leaders who will enable and spread his destructive lies, I’m not your person,” she said before the vote, drawing boos from GOP colleagues. Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, had survived an earlier challenge after voting to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. But she continued to feud with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who says he doesn’t want to “relitigate the past” and has courted Trump’s support.
“If no one is following you, you are only taking a walk,” Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina said after filing the resolution to boot Cheney. “You, Liz, are only taking a walk.” House Republicans are expected to replace Cheney with Rep. Elise Stefanik, 36, of New York, a onetime moderate who became a fierce Trump loyalist and objected to certifying President Biden’s election victory. While her colleagues see Trump as vital to reclaiming a House majority, Cheney believes the party glosses over polling evidence that Trump is deeply unpopular in battleground districts. After losing her post, Cheney said she is still committed to doing “everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets near the Oval Office.”
“It isn’t Cheney who is preventing Republicans from moving on and repairing the wounds from the 2020 election,” said NationalReview .com in an editorial. She is consistently conservative and voted with Trump on substantive issues 93 percent of the time, compared with 78 percent for Stefanik. But Cheney will not repeat Trump’s stolen-election lie, which he continues to press in TV appearances, blog posts, and speeches at Mar-a-Lago. If we conservatives want to move forward, bowing to Trump is “a funny way to show it.”
Cheney went too far, said Byron York in WashingtonExaminer.com. The GOP stood by Cheney after she and nine House Republicans voted to impeach Trump, but “she couldn’t seem to stop talking about Trump, and of course, many in the media” love her criticism of him and of the GOP. Constantly undermining the party’s messaging is not the job description of House Republican Conference chair.
The GOP is significantly more radical than it was last fall, said Mona Charen in TheBulwark.com, when most Republicans “held the line” and rejected Trump’s pleas to decertify the election. Now, “if Cheney must be axed because she will not lie,” what will happen if the GOP takes control of Congress next year? If Trump runs in 2024 and asks Congress to override the Electoral College, will Republicans defer to “the rule of law”—or to Trump? By purging truth tellers like Cheney, GOP leaders have aligned themselves with the Jan. 6 mob. Beware: “The real steal is coming.”