By Todd Lassa
Liz Cheney, who just lost her post as the third most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives, has told allies that her ouster as conference chairman is a “turning point” for the GOP.
Since the January 6 MAGA-hat attack on Capitol Hill, Democrats and those Republicans disaffected with their party since late 2016 have been holding their collective breath, wondering whether the GOP would move on as it has after every presidential election loss in the past. Even after a sufficient number of Senate Republicans failed to appear in convicting Trump for instigating that insurrection, rebukes from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and even House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy gave the ex-president’s detractors hope he would quickly fade away to wallow in his belief that his re-election was stolen, cloistered virtually alone in Mar-a-Lago much like the title character at Xanadu in the opening scene of Citizen Kane.
For a short time, Trump’s grip on the GOP appeared to be loosening, but then party stalwarts like McCarthy and Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina started showing up at Mar-a-Lago, while Trump showed up at CPAC in Orlando to effectively claim the party’s leadership. Trump’s ability to convince his followers to believe, and his party’s leaders to repeat, the lie that last November’s election had been stolen recalled a flashback scene later in Citizen Kane when Welles’ character loses a gubernatorial election, and editors at his newspaper are forced to run the headline “Kane Defeated – Fraud at Polls.”
Cheney’s removal from the House Republican Committee chairmanship will not push her gently into the night, but it may have freed her up to work, as she promised after the vote against her Wednesday, to do everything she can to assure that Donald Trump doesn’t get anywhere near the Oval Office again.
“We have seen the damage that he continues to provoke with his language, we have seen his lack of commitment and dedication to the Constitution, and I think it’s very important that we make sure whomever we elect is someone who will be faithful to the Constitution.”
Whether intended or not, Cheney is now a RINO – “Republican in name only” – in the eyes of Trump’s supporters, but unlike other conservatives who broke off from the GOP in the last five years, she will fight from the inside. Those RINOs, in turn, believe that Trump is not a true conservative – not only in many of his policies, but also in terms of what they see as his disregard for the rule of law.
Until House Republicans removed her from her committee leadership position, she was considered a leading prospect for House speaker if, as expected, the GOP retakes its majority in November 2022. Now the expectation for a Republican House majority remains, and GOP-led state legislatures quickly rewriting voting laws, first in key battleground states as Georgia, Texas, Iowa, and Arizona has the Cheney wing of the party, as well as Democrats, worried the mechanism soon will be in place for a successful coup through a Constitutional overturn of Electoral College results in 2024, should that become necessary for Trump’s return to the White House.
Far-fetched as that may seem, Capitol Hill Republicans who want to move on from Trump (including those too scared to say so out loud) now are pinning their hopes on a Cheney-led coup from within. More than 100 former Republican officials and politicians, led by an Department of Homeland Security ex-official from the Trump administration, Miles Taylor, have formed an organization, Repair, to launch a third party for conservatives. It would almost certainly sacrifice itself by splitting the conservative vote and handing the win to the Democratic Party, while ultimately exorcizing the GOP of Trump.