Another setback for House Democrats shows that Republicans should take back the House majority with relative ease. That is, if they decide to get out of their own way.
Democrats were shut out of a runoff in Texas’s 6th Congressional District. President Joe Biden only lost that district by 3 points last November. It was the latest blow to the Democrat prophecy of a “blue Texas,” as the split field of Democrats only combined for 38% of the vote.
Yet, this isn’t the biggest story for House Republicans this week. Instead, with former President Donald Trump still throwing a temper tantrum over his election loss and a media desperate to get back their ratings by talking about anything and everything Trump, House Republicans are focusing all their energy on Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the GOP Conference Chairwoman.
Trump still won’t quit whining about Republicans who refused to declare him the winner of the 2020 presidential election. Cheney hasn’t made it easy on herself, putting her and Trump in a perpetual cycle of denouncements and responses. But Trump’s inability to acknowledge that he lost to a doddering gaffe machine who hardly campaigned fuels this circular firing squad, as does a liberal media that would much rather cover Trump’s rage blog than the doddering gaffe machine who is now the president.
“Cheney won’t move on.”
Right.
A sampling of Trump’s new “blog.”
cont… pic.twitter.com/lmzyj8ZJWM
— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) May 5, 2021
Republicans are just a handful of seats from reclaiming the House and not having to worry about whether or not West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin can hold off the worst excesses of the Democratic agenda. Letting Trump run the party into the ground as a vanity play makes that fight much more difficult.
Nine of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump have received primary challengers, including three in districts Trump carried by fewer than 5 points and one in a district Biden carried by 11. It’s not hard to picture an election cycle where Trump emerges from Mar-a-Lago to make campaigning against traitorous Republicans his top priority.
After all, with the Senate majority on the line, Trump made campaigning against traitorous Republicans his top priority in Georgia, even though none of them were on the ballot. In the end, Trump depressed GOP turnout while motivating Democratic voters, and now Chuck Schumer is the Senate Majority Leader.
Republicans thinking they can jettison Cheney from GOP leadership and move on from Trump-Republican feuds are fooling themselves. And as long as they allow Trump to dictate the GOP conversation, taking the gavel from Speaker Nancy Pelosi is only going to become that much tougher.
