LIZ CHENEY LOOSES HER GOP LEADERSHIP POSITION

 

… Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz spoke out against Liz Cheney at the “America First” Rally

 

Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has supported Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to be the Republican conference chair

 

Isn’t it interesting that in a random interview of citizens of Wyoming, only one of them happened to be a Democrat.  And that Democrat was the only one interviewed that would agree to vote for the Republican Representative, Liz Cheney.  All of the other Republicans said words to the effect that Rep. Cheney was a “traitor” because she was against former President Trump.

I guess this is just more proof as to how the former president has really gotten the Republicans in the deep Red states to drink the Trump Kool-Aid.

In addition, the top Republican in the House publicly endorsed the ouster of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from the party’s leadership team.  This is the same GOP leader that only a few weeks ago lauded Ms. Cheney as a Republican leader.  But his reversal paved the way for Cheney’s removal, and it sends a clear message that the allegiance to former president Donald Trump is a requirement to hold power in the GOP.

The House Minority Leader I’m referring to is Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) who threw his support behind Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to be the new Republican conference chair, the No. 3 job in GOP leadership which is what is happening.  McCarthy was backing someone who was at one-time, a moderate, centrist Republican who has reversed herself and emerged over the past months as a staunch defender of Trump.  This is the same Republican who has previously been against some of Trump’s decisions, but she has reversed that position and she has also helped spread his false claims of election fraud.

McCarthy, avoided mentioning Cheney by name during his appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” last week when asked about the campaign to oust Cheney.  He wants to get rid of her over her dogged efforts to denounce Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Per McCarthy: “Any member can take whatever position they believe in. . . . [but] what we’re talking about is a position in leadership,” McCarthy said, adding: “As conference chair, you have one of the most critical jobs as a [GOP] messenger going forward.”  In other words, as the GOP messenger, they can’t have anyone bad mouthing the former president, especially if he is planning to run in 2024.

McCarthy said that Cheney has accused Trump, as have others, who have spread the election falsehoods of “turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”  We all know that Trump's statements are total falsehoods.  Cheney had survived a previous vote among fellow Republicans in the wake of her outspoken support for Trump’s impeachment following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.  But Cheney has refused to bend to the will of McCarthy and others who have since affirmed their loyalty to Trump.  (To not have recorded votes, Cheney was voted out by a voice vote.)

Two weeks ago was the first time that McCarthy officially endorsed Stefanik as a replacement for Cheney, though Axios reported last week that the GOP leader had said he had “had it” with Cheney during an off-air conversation with Fox News’ Steve Doocy that was caught on a live microphone.

McCarthy’s official support of Cheney’s removal is the latest sign of how the GOP is purging from its leadership anyone seen as opponents of Trump.  This solidified the former president’s grip on the party. 

The Washington Post reported that the National Republican Congressional Committee, in recent polling presentations to its members, had left out key polling data about Trump’s serious weakness in a number of districts.  This was the party’s indicating a willingness to downplay the damage the former president could do to the party.  Instead, the support for Trump, and to his baseless claims that the election was stolen, that has become the: defining loyalty test for all Republicans.

Few actions will symbolize that reality more than the replacement of Cheney in party leadership with the less conservative Stefanik.

Where Stefanik has often broken with the party line, at least in the past, Cheney has notched a fiercely conservative voting record.  In 2017, Rep. Stefanik broke with the GOP to vote against Trump’s tax plan.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a moderate Republican who has also criticized Trump in the past, said Sunday that he was dismayed by the extent to which the party is now built around support for the former president.

“It just bothers me that you have to swear fealty to the ‘dear leader’ or you get kicked out of the party,” Hogan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who has been one of the few Republican lawmakers to speak out vocally against Trump, said McCarthy was responsible for Trump’s ability to remain all-powerful in the GOP, even after losing his reelection bid.

On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Kinzinger argued that Trump had been “done” and relegated to “sulking away at Mar-a-Lago”.  This is all after Jan. 6, when a pro-Trump mob overran the U.S. Capitol in a violent insurrection that left five people dead.  Immediately afterward, McCarthy told his House colleagues then, that Trump “bears responsibility” for the Capitol attack and he even floated the idea of censuring Trump.  But he has reversed all of that.

Two weeks after stating that the former president ”bears responsibility” for the mob attack on the Capitol, McCarthy flew to Florida to meet with Trump.  That’s where they discussed taking back the House in 2022.  Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) did the same thing in early February.  “Their decision to do so, along with the fundraising implications for others in the party, helped restore relevance to the former president,” Kinzinger has said.

“They put the [heart] paddles on Donald Trump and resurrected him in the party, and everybody after that became scared to death of who Donald Trump was again,” Kinzinger said. “And that’s what empowered him. And everybody [who dared criticize Trump] went quiet.”

Kinzinger, who months ago started a Political Action Committee to challenge his party’s embrace of Trump.  He has increasingly found himself in the minority within the GOP.  Last Sunday, he likened the Republican Party to the Titanic “in the middle of this slow sink,” with Trump “running around trying to find women’s clothing to get on the first lifeboat.”  “As a party, we have to have an internal look and a full accounting as to what led to Jan. 6,” Kinzinger said. “There’s a few of us that are just saying, ‘Guys, this is not good, not just for the future of the party, but this is not good for the future of this country.’ ”

Within the most ardently pro-Trump wing of the GOP, the current animosity toward Cheney and other Republicans who have criticized Trump was on full display over the weekend, at an “America First” rally in central Florida hosted by Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).  For more than an hour Friday, they mocked Democrats but they also rallied the crowd against so-called “Republicans in Name Only (RINO’s)” who dared to go against Trump and his agenda.   “It’s the establishment against the rest of us,” Gaetz said.  But the establishment he refers to is correct.

However, the polls show the support for Trump, and his election falsehoods, is deep and broad in the Republican electorate.  Across the country, local and state party organizations have sided with the former president and moved to censure or otherwise punish officials who have attacked Trump.  Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a vocal Trump critic, was booed by a Republican audience in his home state. 

Cheney’s loss of her leadership role drew a sympathizer from across the aisle: House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.).

“I don’t agree with Liz on much politically, but, you know, that’s how we grow as a country. This whole thing that everybody ought to be marching in lockstep, that is what leads people to destruction,” Clyburn said on CNN’s “State of the Union” last Sunday. “I want to see a strong Republican Party. My parents were Republicans, and I would love to see this party honor them.”

It is amazing how many so called Republicans have gotten on the “Trump Train”.

The only good news is that the total support for the former president still seems to be only about 50% of the party, but you never hear about that.  If that is true and that percentage holds, the GOP will have a hard time taking the House and in keeping the Senate….we all hope.

Copyright G. Ater 2021