Liz Cheney, under attack by many of her Republican colleagues, could lose her leadership post.
The Wyoming congresswoman knew she was challenging her party’s base by voting for President Trump’s impeachment, and is resisting.
Now comes a very different type of battle in the House. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the newly elected congresswoman from Georgia, is facing an intense reaction from incendiary Facebook posts before entering politics.
As CNN first reported, Greene, a Q’Anon supporter, liked a comment that said the quickest way to remove Nancy Pelosi was with a “bullet in the head”. Greene also agreed that FBI agents should be executed as part of the “Deep State”.
Furthermore, when Greene wrote about Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the nuclear deal with Iran, a commentator said, “Now are we going to hang them ?? It means H&O ???” Greene replied, “The stage is being set up. The players are being put in place. We must be patient.”
The leadership’s reaction? House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said he would have a conversation with Greene.
To be fair, McCarthy also opposes Cheney’s withdrawal from his No. 3 leadership position. He’s a guy trying to keep a fractured caucus. But he expressed sadness that Cheney had not confided his impeachment position in advance.
For his part, Greene issued a statement:
“Over the years, I have had teams of people managing my pages. Many posts have been liked. Many posts have been shared. Some have not represented my opinions. Especially those that CNN is about to spread over the Internet.”
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No expression of horror, no denunciation of death threats. Only part of what was posted on your behalf may have been written by others.
Pelosi, of course, was harshly critical. “What concerns me is the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, which is willing to ignore, to ignore these statements,” she told reporters yesterday.
In a fundamental way, the two women represent opposite wings of the GOP in the post-Trump era.
As the daughter of the former vice president, Cheney has long been at odds with Trump, who ran against the Bush administration’s foreign policy. But the January 6 riot at the Capitol was necessary for the congresswoman to achieve such a clean break.
Anti-Cheney Republicans say they have committed 115 of their 211 members to take her out of the leadership, although they have not released a list. For them, voting to expel Trump is an unforgivable offense that must be punished. And their argument – that Cheney is at odds with political convention – may be true, given Trump’s control over the party.
However, the party appears to be in no hurry to penalize Greene. A Democratic member, Jimmy Gomez, asked that she be expelled from the House. Greene condemned the violence of the Capitol and, without evidence, blamed “Antifa / BLM terrorism” and criticized what she called “accomplices”: Vice President Harris, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The Georgia legislature is involved in other controversies. CNN unveiled a video from last year showing Greene following Parkland High School shooting survivor David Hogg as he walked to the Capitol to lobby for gun control. She is seen asking him a series of questions and then saying “he is a coward”.
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Earlier this week, Greene had the sheriff’s deputy expel a local news team from a city hall after a reporter tried to ask a question, although the media had been invited and the station had credentials for the event.
So far, at least, I haven’t seen any conservatives in the air defending Greene as she is denounced by liberal commentators. The Republican Party is in a fierce struggle for the future, while its two factions vie for supremacy in the wake of the Trump years. The treatment given to Cheney and Greene will go a long way in resolving this issue.