Meanwhile, party leaders will resume consideration of censoring Greene, who spent several hours in a meeting with Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday night. There is pressure from Democrats and Republicans in the Senate for her to lose the committee’s duties for offensive activities on social media before running for office and her behavior in just a month as a Georgia representative.
The challenges facing Cheney and Greene epitomize the furious battle for control of the Republican Party between orthodox conservatives and pro-Trump radicals who are seen by the system as “cancer” and “crazy weeds”.
Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is the epitome of the ultra-conservative, but internationalist, old school Republican Party that scorns Trump’s attack on democracy. Greene is a proponent of QAnon conspiracy theory and is an avatar of the wild fringe received at the GOP by Trump.
No sign of Greene’s regret
The volatile state of the Republican Party is evident in the way Cheney has faced far more public criticism from his colleagues in the House than Greene, a proponent of a conspiracy theory based on baseless claims that Democratic leaders are pedophiles.
Leading Republican Party senators, such as minority leader Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, defended Cheney. But, emphasizing his growing distance from the caucus GOP House, a Trump acolyte, Deputy Matt Gaetz of Florida, even traveled to Wyoming last week to protest against her and start an effort aimed at ending his career. The visit underscored how Trump’s loyal base is still dictating the party’s direction, even with the former president outside the White House and how some powerful Republican Party players hope his influence will disappear.
Tensions are sure to rise due to impeachment trial
The dispute that is dividing the Republican Party in the House – and alienating its members from its brothers in the Senate – is coming at an especially tense moment with Trump’s second impeachment trial scheduled to start in the Senate next week.
The ex-president’s team indicated on Tuesday that it plans to once again highlight Trump’s dangerous lies about a stolen election, while Democrats present graphic evidence of his insurrection that will upset Republican senators.
The outcome of the drama involving Cheney and Greene are skirmishes in the broader search for the GOP identity that will shape the race for mid-term races next year and weigh on the GOP’s chances of presenting candidates capable of helping to win back Congress – a crucial consideration for Biden’s presidency.
Fundamentally, the struggle that rips the Republican Party apart every day is the one that started when Trump declared his candidacy for president in 2015 and led the Republican Party on a wild populist and nationalist journey.
He was exacerbated by a generation of pro-Trump figures inspired to run for Congress for his success.
Thune argued on Tuesday that “House Republicans are going to have to decide who they want to be.”
“They want to be part of limited government and fiscal responsibility, free markets, peace through force and pro-life, or they want to be part of conspiracy theories and QAnon, and I think that’s the decision they have made to face” said Thune.
Another traditional Republican, the party’s presidential candidate in 2012, Mitt Romney – who is now an outlier isolated by the Trumpian tide – also influenced.
“I think our long history as a party has shown that it is important for us to separate ourselves from the people who are crazy weeds,” said the Utah senator. “If we don’t, then our opposition will try to brand us with its image and point of view, which has been detrimental to any party that doesn’t.”
GOP is hostage to its most radical elements
The challenge for the broader Republican Party, however, is that there is much evidence that the party’s activist base is not enthusiastic about small government, debt reduction, globalization and a hawkish foreign policy – four pillars of the Republican Party for decades between. Ronald Reagan and Trump.
“We have to be aware that Marjorie Taylor Greene has a lot of followers in this country,” said Gabriel Sterling, one of the Republican electoral officials who stood up against Trump’s attempt to steal the election in Georgia.
“I mean, she raised millions of dollars based on things she said and sometimes … being attacked by quotes / closed ‘elites’ only elevates her in terms of the esteem she sees for many, many people,” said Sterling Kate Bolduan of CNN on Tuesday.
In many ways, this is a schism that the Republican Party in Washington has brought to itself, and that is already more destabilizing than the influx of radical legislators brought to Washington by the Tea Party uprising and the New Gingrich Republican revolution that conquered the In 1994.
Four years of appeasing Trump’s rude character, unconstitutional power grabs and appeals to more basic instincts – in a Faustian pact that returned a conservative Supreme Court – effectively provided a way into the party for extremists who found inspiration in the former president.
McConnell is turning against die-hard Trumpists like Greene and Capitol rebels now. But his failure for weeks to condemn the former president’s attacks on the integrity of the election helped create the crazy atmosphere that Trump explored when he incited the Capitol insurrection on January 6.
The strength of the pro-Trump faction in the Republican Party – at a time when more traditional conservatives like McConnell would like to get rid of their influence – was emphasized by the fact that the majority of Republicans in the House voted not to certify Biden’s victory in the elections about electoral fraud lies.
And even in the Senate, 45 Republicans – including McConnell – voted to support Sen. Rand Paul’s attempt to declare the impeachment trial that begins next week unconstitutional.
The enigma for the broader GOP is that the path to fundraising, fame and paramount success lies in the sponsorship of Trump. McCarthy’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the former president last week shows that he believes his hope of winning the House is closer to Greene’s appeal than Cheney’s.
However, Senate Republicans have a long memory of past disputes wasted by extremist candidates. And Trump’s political style has cost the party two run-off elections in Georgia that handed the Senate over to Democrats.
“Which side do I want to be on? Liz Cheney or Marjorie Taylor Greene?” Former Arizona senator Jeff Flake, who was also expelled from the party because of his opposition to the Trump revolt, asked in The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, summing up the electoral conundrum facing an increasingly ungovernable Republican Party.
“Where do you think the party is likely to grow the most or where do I want to be as an elected official? It is very strong and that is what the party is facing now.”