Ousted From the Party | AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
It was a relatively quick end for a once-rising political star. After only 20 minutes of debate and a resounding voice vote, Liz Cheney was removed from the Congressional GOP leadership. The reasons she was ousted so quickly after surviving a previous leadership vote was simple: she couldn’t stop talking about an election Congressional Republicans are eager to leave behind. Her ouster certainly doesn’t hold well for her political future as she faces a difficult primary next year against a Trump-anointed candidate. It also raises questions about the GOP that few are willing to answer.
I won’t lie: I despise Liz Cheney and her family for the damage they’ve done to the United States. Even when you forget about her father, Liz Cheney is still not a person or congresswoman worth emulating or even praising. Charles Blow, a NYT columnist whom I don’t hold in high regard, agrees as he wrote a scathing column that decries the work Cheney did before her “heroic stand.” How can people forget that barely 10 years ago, she refused to condemn the birthers - a cause supported by Donald Trump - and even said that the American people were “increasingly uncomfortable with an American president who seems to be afraid to defend America?” She even defended the use of torture to John McCain, an honorable senator who endured torture in Vietnam for years, where she accused him of slandering our veterans. When you consider how Liz Cheney was before she was even elected, you don’t see a white knight but a chip off the old dark specter that is Dick Cheney.
While she expressed concern over Trump’s rise in 2015, she became a loyal leader within the GOP supporting many of his measures. Yes, she did occasionally issue chides of the Trump administration, but it never really escalated beyond respectful disagreements. She defended Trump after the Hollywood Access tape was leaked saying, “Hillary’s actions have been far worse.” And up to the 2020 election, she was a reliable surrogate for the Trump campaign saying that the Democrats have become the “party of anti-semitism,” “infanticide” and “socialism.” In many respects, she sounded similar to Donald Trump on Fox even tweeting about Kamala Harris that might have racial undertones. But then, the election happened and to her credit she was one of the very few representatives that didn’t humor the president’s clownish attempts to overturn the election. Since November, she’s been the center of vitriol from her party, though she’s won plaudits from the Democrats from constantly talking about Trump’s “BIG LIE” to even fist-bumping Biden (even though she stands against their agenda). Call me a skeptic, but her recent actions seem less like a matter of principle than a cynical play to be lauded by posterity after Trump as one of “the good Republicans.” Now that she’s ousted from the leadership and likely to be voted out of Congress next year, she will likely live her life as a cable TV pundit constantly harping about the GOP’s “direction” as many Beltway Republicans have done over the past six years.
With that said, I do greet her ouster with some concern. She should never have been allowed near Republican leadership in the first place, but ousting her for the wrong reasons can be a problem. Liz Cheney isn’t being ousted because she has a 98% rating from the Heritage Foundation, but because she bucked the party for not believing that Trump won the 2020 election. She is - and I hate giving her credit - right in calling out Trump for claim the election was stolen from him. The Republican Party’s inability to move on from 2020 and January 6 is because they are unwilling to face the basic fact that we lost fair and square, albeit with a better margin than what was expected. The situation is made worse as a majority of Republicans believe the 2020 election was rigged preventing the party from moving forward into actually governing.
Cheney is right that we cannot be a party that denies election results as we continue our losing streak of the popular vote in nearly every presidential election since 1992. While she shouldn’t be the voice or future of the GOP, even though she’ll certainly try, there is an uncomfortable question as to what will be the future. The future of the Republican party will remain in question as it struggles to define what it truly is. Liz Cheney’s successor will likely be Elise Stefanik, a representative with a moderate voting record, but her appointment will just paper over the fact that we don’t know what we truly stand for anymore. Just a few days ago, Lindsey Graham stated that “we can’t grow without [Trump]” and Trump is still the frontrunner for 2024 if he chooses to run again. Cheney’s ouster is simply another part of the question I’ve asked every day since January 6th: will we be able to move past Trump and be a genuine conservative party? We need to say “Yes” soon or we’ll find ourselves ousted just as we ousted Liz Cheney.