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It’s Time for Liz Cheney to Go
House Republicans kept Liz Cheney in her leadership role by a secret vote in February. If there’s a vote in May, she won’t be so lucky.
The Wyoming representative angered many in the base when she joined nine other Republicans to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. As House Republican Conference chair, she holds the third-highest position in minority leadership. Trump supporters found it a betrayal of their party.
Cheney avoided removal with a 145-61 vote in her favor. Anyone with a hint of political acumen or leadership instincts would start mending fences, uniting the caucus, and moving forward. Cheney chose the opposite.
She crowed about her victory at the time and worsened her position ever since. Every few weeks, Cheney popped up in the news, always to condemn Donald Trump and the majority of Republicans who supported him.
The last straw came Monday. Speaking at an off-the-record AEI conference in Sea Island, GA, Cheney said: “We can’t embrace the notion the election is stolen. It’s a poison in the bloodstream of our democracy. We can’t whitewash what happened on January 6 or perpetuate Trump’s big lie. It is a threat to democracy. What he did on January 6 is a line that cannot be crossed.”
These comments were leaked, as Cheney expected. They were preceded earlier in the day with her tweet: “The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”
As after every Cheney comment in the past three months, Republicans and pundits are attacking each other, relitigating the 2016 and 2020 elections, and fretting about Trump’s future moves.
If House leadership’s job is to divide its own party, Cheney would be a perfect fit. But Republican Conference Chairs are supposed to unite the team and take the fight to Democrats. You know, the party that controls the House, the Senate, and the White House, and is jamming through a radical progressive agenda.
On substance, I agree with Cheney. The election was not stolen and Trump’s Jan. 6 incitement merited impeachment. But all that is history. The GOP’s job today is to stop Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer. In that fight — the only fight that matters six months after the election — Cheney is AWOL.
Say I bought a sweet 1967 Ford Mustang. Candy apple red, 320 horses, lovingly restored. But six months ago, my wife borrowed it, ran a stop sign, and totaled the car. I would be upset. We would have a long, painful talk. I would sulk for a few weeks then buy a boring used Honda to replace it.
Then my wife asks me to drop off the kids at school, I reply, “Oh, should I bring them in my crappy Accord I had to buy because you destroyed my beautiful Mustang?!“
When she asks if I want anything from Starbucks, I say, “how about a hot Venti Ford-uccino? Do they have one of those?“
“Ugh, Jon. the stylist wrecked my hair.”
“Speaking of wrecks…”
“Jon, that was six months ago. Can we please move on?”
“We can’t embrace the notion that you didn’t wreck my car. It’s a poison in the bloodstream of our marriage. We can’t whitewash what happened to my Mustang! What you did to my car was a line that cannot be crossed!”
Everything sulky Jon said above was accurate. Nothing was helpful, intelligent, or useful to our relationship.
The wife would be right to file for divorce. And it’s time to file papers on Rep. Cheney.
This mess isn’t just about Liz Cheney, the House GOP, or Beltway pundits. Cheney was hired to represent the people of Wyoming and she refuses to do it.
In a just-released poll, Wyoming Republican primary voters oppose her 29% to 65%. Fifty-two percent would vote against her regardless of the challenger. This is hardly surprising since the state chose Trump over Biden 70.4% to 26.7%. Trump’s margin was higher than Cheney’s in 2020.
It’s not as if she is bitterly holding on in a blue state. Wyoming’s lower house is 51-9 GOP and the senate is 28-2 GOP. You could paint an R on a stray cat and voters would send it to the US Capitol over a Democrat.
Most GOP representatives would do a better job as Chair today and Cheney will likely be removed from the House by her own constituents 18 months from now. The job should go to a Republican who wants to achieve party goals in the current Congress and prepare to take the majority in 2022.
For those who want to relitigate the past, there are plenty of pundits eager to take up the slack.
Published in Politics
She may also be auditioning for TV gigs. I also hear they’re openings with the Lincoln Project.
Picturing her and Joyce in a cage match to see who gets Steve Schmidt’s parking space.
We can only hope she never learns of her shame.
And neither were Klobuchar-Buttigieg in 2020. Gary sure knows how to pick ’em!
Where in Phoenix did you live? There can be snow up in Cave Creek and Carefree which are at 2,400 feet, while Phoenix has an elevation of only 1,000 feet. I lived in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area from 1956 to 1970, and from 1978 to 1992. No snow. Your time slots are not the same as mine. Will you grant me that it is highly unlikely to snow in Phoenix in July, which the point?
The sooner we get to the post-Trump GOP the better. Liz Cheney is a hindrance to that goal. She needs to go.
Maybe. Depends on what it looks like. The battle is being waged now. Who will win? Those who believe in freedom and liberty or those who would sell out the citizen class for a mess o’ pottage?
Jeremy Boreing from the Daily Wire put out a very good podcast episode where he made a solid case (albeit a rather obvious one) that the media stole the election and your comment about your neighbor is a case in point. I have a solidly Democratic friend who is similar- she is a busy mother of two small children who doesn’t have time to chase down more detailed information, peruse multiple news sources, listen to podcasts with lengthier interviews. She listens to MSM snippets and, as bright and well-intentioned as she is, that’s it. She doesn’t like political correctness, but she really doesn’t think things will get that bad. Whatever anyone thinks about the election being stolen in various states, rules being circumvented for mail-in ballots, etc etc., the media’s role has been the most glaringly awful.
I think the revitalization shows in the way that GOP politicians like Cruz and Rubio are braver when they speak now. Trump spoke directly, he didn’t bother posing in a plaid shirt and jeans for a photo op with Melania when he went to coal country. He was himself, all the time, for better or worse. I think GOP reps understand the public doesn’t have an appetite for photo-op politicians anymore.
Yes, the GOP had both branches of Congress under Trump. But to what extent was the GOP actually united behind Trump? some of them disavowed him publicly from the start- shall we even mention the Lincoln Project here that made it their mission to undo him (and then undid themselves so charmingly in recent months?). We can debate Trump’s style, his character as much as you like, but he never had a unified ruling party and we see in the face of Democratic chaos, the Republicans are falling apart over Liz Cheney instead of bonding together over what matters- Biden’s devastating policies.
As for 2020 losses…well 2020 was projected to be a Democratic sweep and it was not. They lost a pile of House seats. We can debate what happened in Georgia’s Senate race until the cows come home. It was a loss and that was that. If the Republicans don’t gain back the House and Senate in 2022, they have only themselves to blame.
Assuming valid elections, you’re right.
Always assuming valid elections! Bracing oneself for everything.
But that means if the Republicans DON’T gain back the House and Senate in 2022, it won’t necessarily be REPUBLICAN’S fault. Unless you’re assuming that Republicans can fix all the different states’ election problems by then, and they won’t be vetoed by Democrat governors, etc.
Joel Pollak of Breitbart news wrote an e-book saying the same thing. The election vote at all kinds of United Nations standards. Then throw in how the thing was run by Zuckerberg and the Democrat lawfare.
This is very good.
Except it’s false, if elections are untrustworthy.
Jon, look at this interesting evidence of massive voter fraud in 2020.
https://electionwiz.com/2021/05/04/census-reveals-weird-anomaly-shows-millions-less-voted-in-2020-election-than-official-tally/
Or if a meteor strike kills us all, then it’s also false.
Or true, depending on election trustworthiness.
Or false, depending on the size of the meteor and if it only hits Botswana.
Impeach. Bar. Remove the Census from office.
There’s some wonky things happening with census right now. Statistical anomalies that suggest the Democrats are fudging numbers to retain House seats in Blue states that have lost a lot of population.
As for whether our votes even count anymore, I’m pretty sure that Democrats have stolen many elections over the last couple decades. It’s just that they had to steal so big in 2020, they had a difficult time hiding it. And now we all know.
Zuck’s interference is one of the big issues as well, and it’s nice to see Kansas has now put a stop to that. May other states follow.
They will never get away with anything like that again.
I’m not so confident. What else is the march through the institutions for except as a means of protecting them from facing consequences for their actions. They can now steal brazenly because the courts have shown they’re too timid to challenge them.
Trump wouldn’t have had to tweet so much if Rs in Congress had pushed back against Dem lies.
Instead many of them helped spread those lies.
No we don’t. This is something you believe because you won’t accept any evidence to the contrary.
They boasted about it in a national magazine. How hard is that to accept? They saw it as a feature, not a bug.
Hello, person who refuses to see the evidence.
Anti-Trumpers are bolstered by a fervent, near-religious belief that there was nothing hinky about the 2020 Presidential election. Meanwhile, 70% of Republicans and even 30% of Democrats believe the election was stolen.
Dems changing numbers to get their own way?
Not.
Possible.
I’ve never figured out how the Democrats were so smart they were able to coordinate a sophisticated national effort involving many people to steal the presidential election but so dumb they forgot to do the same and unexpectedly almost lost the House and would have failed to take the Senate but for Trump deciding as a matter of personal revenge to hand the Georgia seats to them.