As the political fate of Congresswoman Liz Cheney is at stake, she has been visibly quiet.
After voting for President Trump’s impeachment three weeks ago, and vehemently denouncing his actions in preparation for the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol, the Wyoming Republican kept her head down. Even when another Republican member of the House, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, traveled to his district to ask his voters to reject her in the next election, Cheney kept his mouth shut.
Given her senior leadership role in the GOP House, it soon appeared that many of her colleagues could decide to support her and support impeachment. Instead, only a handful of Republicans did, and her colleagues will now vote on Wednesday whether she will retain her post as president of the conference.
Cheney’s actions since the impeachment vote are in stark contrast to those of Congressman Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, who was one of nine other Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment on January 13. Kinzinger launched a new political action committee over the past week and aggressively scolded Trump, saying in press interviews and in a cleverly produced video for his PAC that the Republican Party must get rid of the former president’s influence.
“Until we step back and say, ‘This is not a party that prioritizes Trump, it is a party that prioritizes the country’ … we will be chasing our tail,” said Kinzinger on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program on Domigo.
“This is no time for silence,” he says in the video.
This may be more true for Kinzinger than for Cheney. He is a Republican in a state that is solidly Democratic, whose path to public office could be enhanced by his anti-Trump rhetoric. But there is still the question of winning a Republican primary in the future, of course, whether in the Kinzinger district, in the suburbs of Chicago – where Trump won 16 points – or across the state.
The Republican Party of Illinois, meanwhile, is discussing a vote to censor Kinzinger for its criticisms of Trump. Still, if Kinzinger were to rule across the state, a rebuke from his own party could work in his favor.
Cheney not only represents a much more conservative state, she has also worked to win the support of a small and unique group of voters. She needs at least 118 other Republicans in the House to vote for her to maintain her leadership. And his calculation was that waging a public message battle to defend his vote, or respond to Gaetz, or attack Trump, would undermine his chances of getting those votes.
“I think it is better for her not to be seen as a brigade with anyone – either with other members or with Trump – and just defend her vote when the time comes,” said Brendan Buck, who has worked for two Republican House speakers in the past decade . “For the members, it cannot feed the idea that it causes friction, even if Gaetz has climbed.”
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, has urged his conference to avoid infighting, and Cheney’s strategy has been to minimize internal disputes and be seen as working for unity, while putting pressure on members personally for your support.
A Republican adviser close to many members of the House said that Gaetz’s feat may have done more harm than good to his cause, adding to the discomfort among Republicans who could imagine themselves in Cheney’s position. Buck said Cheney would probably “expect a lot of people to see this as [Gaetz] exaggerating your hand. “
“He’s not very popular” among his Republican colleagues in the House, Buck added.
But in addition to the nuances of Cheney and Kinzinger’s particular political circumstances, their respective fortunes raise an issue that has plagued the Republican Party since 2015: How do you solve a problem like Donald John Trump? Do you face him and the forces he unleashed within the GOP or do you try to accommodate them? Fight or flee?
For Cheney, that question will be partially answered on Wednesday in the vote for the Republican leadership in the House. But if she is expelled from her leadership post, it can free her to fight harder. She could raise money to play in the primaries against Republicans looking to turn the Republican Party into the Trump Party.
“The vast majority of Republican voters, volunteers and donors are no longer loyal to the Republican Party. Your loyalty is now to Donald J. Trump, ”said Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the freshman lawmaker who quickly became known for her belief in conspiracy theories and her unquestioned devotion to Trump.
This transfer of loyalty – from one party that is loyal to a certain set of principles and beliefs to another that is essentially dedicated to one person – is what irritates many Republicans. They are trying to avoid alienating Trump supporters, while also reorienting the GOP around the first principles.
“I don’t disrespect President Trump, but the party has to move on. The party is bigger than any candidate, ”said Henry Barbour, a member of the Mississippi Republican National Committee. “We must embrace the things he did well and discard the mistakes he made.”
“If Republicans focus on politics rather than conspiracy theories, this is how we win a national election with more than 50% of the vote,” he said in an interview. He also said he would not have voted to contest the results of the 2020 elections or try to overthrow them, as the three Mississippi Republicans in the House did. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch also joined the lawsuit seeking to overturn the election result.
Barbour said he did not agree with Kinzinger that the U.S. Senate should find Trump guilty of the impeachment charge and condemn him, which would prevent the former president from holding political positions in the future. But he said he respects Kinzinger’s willingness to speak out and is increasingly frustrated because many politicians are unwilling to do so.
“We are a republic, not just a democracy. We really need strong leaders, people who are willing to lead because they believe in something and think it will be good for people, and they understand that they have more information than the average voter, ”said Barbour. “You can’t just follow the cable news rhetoric and voters’ whims.”
But Terry Sullivan, a Republican consultant who was campaign manager for Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, said it has become increasingly difficult for politicians to do anything that their most intense voters – those who participate in the party’s primaries. – do not support.
“Right after they lead, most of them have ex-titles,” Sullivan told Yahoo News.
Sullivan, who also oversaw the 2004 campaign by former South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, said he began to worry about extremist currents within the Republican Party more than a decade ago. Sullivan no longer worked for DeMint – one of the most conservative members of Congress – in 2010, but while watching him campaign for re-election during the rise of the Tea Party, “I was thinking that [DeMint] must be careful what he was starting. “
There was a “careful policy” discussed among some as the Tea Party movement consolidated in early 2010, said Sullivan, but “the rhetoric was getting out of hand and becoming more intense and, at the end of the day, it was losing focus on conservative policy and become just anti-establishment and anti-institution ”.
“You can start a revolution, but the mafia can end for you,” said Sullivan.
That sense of spiraling chaos is now shaping the decisions of the two Republican leaders in Congress, McCarthy in the House and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.
McCarthy has less room for maneuver than McConnell. The Chamber is a hot chamber where all members are re-elected every two years, unlike the Senate, where members serve six-year terms. McCarthy sent mixed signals about almost everything from Greene to Cheney and Trump. But his trip to meet Trump last week in Florida and the photo of the two together is the most significant move he has made.
McConnell also struggled with Trumpism – and ran away. He voted not to proceed with the impeachment trial, after signaling before he was open to voting to condemn Trump.
But the Senate Republican leader, known for being a strategist primarily interested in maintaining power, has nevertheless taken a more conflicted approach to Trumpism in recent weeks. More recently, this week, he denounced Greene for endorsing “crazy lies and conspiracy theories” that are “cancer for the Republican Party”.
McConnell also supported Cheney, calling her “an important leader in our party” and someone “with deep convictions and the courage to act on them”.
It was a clear attempt to signal Republicans in the House that they should support Cheney and pressured McCarthy to punish Greene.
A Republican strategist said Greene’s lightning rod profile could hurt Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections if she is not convicted and rejected, just as polls indicate that Democrats were harmed in the 2020 election by discussions of socialism and radical proposals tacitly adopted by some of its legislators, how to get funding from the police.
Referring to one of the conspiracy theories that Greene speculated on in the past, the strategist said: “There is no way back to the majority if our candidates are explaining Jewish space lasers next fall.”
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Originally published