House Republicans voted by a large margin on Wednesday to allow Wyoming representative Liz Cheney to remain the Republican Party conference president after an hour-long meeting in which members voiced their complaints about their vote to oust former President Trump last month. Only 61 Republicans voted to remove Cheney from his post, while 145 voted for her to remain in a secret ballot.
The vote came after Cheney told his Republican colleagues that he would not apologize for his decision, according to a source familiar with the meeting. She later praised the result as an “excellent vote”.
“We will not be in a situation where people can choose any member of the leadership,” she said after the meeting. “It was a resounding recognition that we need to move forward together, and then we need to move forward in a way that will help us defeat the really dangerous and negative Democratic policies.”
She entered the meeting on Wednesday with the support of minority leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, and Republican Whip Steve Scalise, the two main Republican leaders in the House.
“People can have differences of opinion. This is what we are discussing. Liz has the right to vote for her conscience,” McCarthy told reporters during a break at the meeting.
But both top leaders allowed and even encouraged members to question Cheney’s decision before the Republican Party meeting. In an interview last month, McCarthy said he was “concerned” that she had not released her vote or her plan to speak out against the former president in advance.
After the vote, both said their conference was in a good place.
“We just received a resounding shot in the arm of a team,” said McCarthy. Scalise said the conference “came out much stronger” because everyone was able to voice their complaints.
Republican representatives Matt Rosendale of Montana and Andy Biggs of Arizona, who were among the members most frustrated with Cheney, led efforts to remove her from her leadership post. The vote to remove it ended up falling short of the more than 115 members that anti-Cheney forces claimed would vote against it.
The main problem for Republicans to support the removal effort was Cheney’s decision to announce his position the day before the vote, a source familiar with efforts to remove Cheney from his leadership position told CBS News. During the debate the next day, House Democrats quoted their words on the floor.
Cheney was the best known and most senior of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach the former president. After making the announcement, Rosendale asked her to resign, saying that she “failed to consult the Conference, failed to follow the spirit of the Republican Conference rules and ignored the preferences of Republican voters”.
The vote also caused problems at home. She attracted three main candidates to her seat on the House, including Wyoming state senator Anthony Bouchard, who said her impeachment vote “shows how far she is from Wyoming.” Her colleague, Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, traveled to her home state to protest against her, calling her “a beltway bureaucrat who turned into a fake cowgirl” and detonating her impeachment vote and supporting American military involvement abroad.
Alan He, Zak Hudak and Jack Turman contributed to this story.