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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
If that were true, President Trump wouldn’t have been campaigning for them. But he did. Don’t believe everything you read from National Review.
What’s NR got to do with it? Look at voting in the most Republican counties and the erosion in turnout between November and January. Trump violated the first rule of campaigning – have a consistent and strong message – instead he’d say few words about the January election and voting and then rail endlessly about how November was stolen, how January would be, and how bad Kemp and all his other “enemies” were. The man was a disaster. I voted for Trump but it demonstrated his biggest downside – it’s always about him. He threw everyone who wanted to hold the Senate under the bus while he indulged in his personal vendettas. He lost a winnable election in 2020 because of his inability to control himself.
Oh, I just assumed they were spreading lies again.
Not true, actually. He lost the election through Democrat chicanery.
You mean the one where the Dems were smart enough to nationally rig the presidential but dumb enough to forget to rig the Senate and House?
So send the FBI after me because I won’t accept the assertions of the Ruling Class, then.
Your mistake is assuming a coordinated national effort.
Instead of backing the triumph of a GOP president, house and senate after the elections of 2016 and immediately setting to work to implement his policies, Paul Ryan backed down and did absolutely nothing to help him. As we look back, it’s easy to see the heavy hand of Ryan’s former running mate, Mitt Romney, as well as the Bush faction in the background. When Trump needed the party to close ranks and stand up to the Clinton-created Russian silliness, there was an eerie quiet from GOP leadership in Washington D.C. I remember thinking at the time how Nancy Pelosi would react had the reverse situation presented itself and just knew she would fight like a tiger for her president and bring the house with her. Trump fought alone as there was no tiger of any stature in Washington D.C. to help him. The millions of voters who made his presidency possible watched the nightly news with silent tears as the pompous pundits gleefully asserted their considerable power over the narrative in hopes of destroying him.
Yes. Well said. Happily, Ryan is gone. And the sooner Mittens disappears, the better.
This is exactly right. Eight years to get ready to get rid of the ACA, and nothing. What a bunch of liars. They should have just told him to wait a year because they weren’t ready.
Why in the hell wasn’t the second priority the wall? It obviously levers up all of the other border patrol activity. It’s a totally good idea.
Sure, the wannabe Congress Critters wouldn’t pay the vig. Not too hard to imagine.
Interesting how quiet everyone is/was about how much of his war chest Mitch used in Georgia…or does he just use that to defeat conservatives in R primaries?
Kinzinger can go, too.
Please provide documentation as to your arguments.
The people who didn’t bother to show up are finding out what suckers they were.
We are so lost as a party when people attend a Gaetz-Greene rally.
How did it come to this?
What do you mean “we”?
You can call her a progressive Republican all you want. That changes nothing unless voting in sync with Trump 93% of the time makes you a progressive Republican. Then you might have a point.
The fecklessnes was with voters who backed Trump and Trump himself. In the very first debate he praised the socialist health systems of Scotland and Canada. That comment in no way hurt him. Clearly his voters didn’t care about the issue.
In 2009 the GOP drew up a health plan he rejected as “too mean.” Fine. They went back to the drawing board and passed the “skinny repeal.” That plan faltered because of McCain and shame on him for it. But Trump was in no position to win McCain to the plan. He’d long ago burned that bridge – some deal maker. That was at the very beginning of his presidency. In all the back and forth Trump never offered his own plan. After that fiasco he kept promising he had a plan one but he NEVER produced it. He never made any kind of effort to move health care legislation through the Congress.
They DID stop Obama, long before Trump came along. Obama’s legislative agenda was dead once the GOP took the House. They just didn’t have the tools to roll back Obamacare until they had the presidency. Unfortunately for the GOP, the president turned out to be Trump, someone who liked being president but had zero interest in doing the job.
Everything Obama did after the Republicans won Congress he did with his pen and his phone. The courts were supposed to stop that nonsense which they often did but not for the most visible cases like Obamacare and later, DACA.
@spacemanspiff
What should the GOP have done about the ACA in those two years when they controlled everything?
Sent McCain and Ryan packing.
Trump lied about it and he wasn’t ready. The GOP lied about it FOR EIGHT YEARS and they weren’t ready.
The combination of employer-based insurance and the ACA is just totally thorny in every way. Obama lied to get it passed with a parliamentary trick. They are forcing single payer and it worked.
It would have been nice if someone had at least checked to see if Olympia Snowe had a backbone.
You mean Susan Collins.
They all lied about and or didn’t think about about the political and operational issues every time they voted for repeal, prior.
No, Snowe was the master RINO of Maine who mentored Collins:
They could have sent the same bill that they sent to Obama seven times unless that was all just part of failure theater.
(Sorry, I now see that I misunderstood your point. I read too fast and was thinking of the years that the D party controlled everything and passed the ACA. Snowe was gone by the timeframe you were actually talking about.)
None of these people give this any thought. Operationally or the politics of it.