Another day, another referendum on former President Donald Trump.
Fights inside the Republican Party are increasingly cast as disputes over Trump and his party leadership role going forward, including the possibility he will run for president again in 2024.
The most prominent internal GOP battle in which Trump figures prominently is the looming vote to potentially replace Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, daughter of two-term former Vice President Dick Cheney, as chairwoman of the House Republican Conference.
LIZ CHENEY AND THE THREE REPUBLICAN STRATEGIES FOR DEALING WITH TRUMP
Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican, has been an outspoken Trump critic since the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. She was one of 10 members of her party in that chamber to vote to impeach Trump over inciting the insurrection. She beat back an attempt to oust her from leadership over that vote earlier this year but has not stopped quarreling with Trump and his most passionate supporters since.
Trump has been equally loquacious about his mounting displeasure with Cheney. “Liz Cheney is a warmongering fool who has no business in Republican Party Leadership,” he said in a tweet-like statement this week issued through his political action committee. The former president has taken to calling the lawmaker “Warmonger Liz Cheney” in the tradition of “Crooked Hillary” Clinton, “Low Energy Jeb” Bush, and “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz.
But the battle over Cheney, likely to be decided on Wednesday, is hardly the only Republican contest viewed in Trump-centric terms. From the race for the GOP gubernatorial race in Virginia to the evaluation of how different sitting Republican governors have handled the pandemic, everything is viewed through the prism of the businessman and reality TV star who spent the last four years in the Oval Office.
Sometimes that is because of Trump, a longtime subscriber to the tabloid mentality that there is no such thing as bad publicity, himself. When Glenn Youngkin won the Republican nomination for governor of Virginia, Trump promptly endorsed him — allowing Democrats to cue up fresh attacks.
“Glenn Youngkin spent his campaign fawning all over Donald Trump, and now Trump has returned the favor by wholeheartedly endorsing him,” former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination this year, said in a statement. “Virginians have rejected Donald Trump’s hate, conspiracy theories, and dangerous lies at every turn, and we’re going to do it again to his hand-picked, extreme right-wing candidate Glenn Youngkin this November.”
Philip Bump of the Washington Post wrote that the rise of Rep. Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican favored to replace Cheney in the leadership fight, proves that Trump is what the party and political conservatism are all about.
“Yes, Elise Stefanik’s voting record is more liberal than Cheney’s. But she decided to go all in on Trump, and has enjoyed a spike in fundraising and a likely promotion as a result,” Bump tweeted. “Conservatism at this point isn’t about policy.”
Republicans have disparate views on Trump’s utility going forward, as well as on the question of whether his influence is holding steady or on the wane. Much of Cheney’s slippage since she survived the last leadership vote is the result of defecting Republicans who believe that Trump’s detractors in the party are actually the ones doing too much to keep the former president in the spotlight.
“Absent a disastrous first two years of a Biden administration, the president’s help in a primary will nearly guarantee a general election defeat,” said a Republican strategist in Arizona, where the party has lost both Senate seats over the last two election cycles. President Joe Biden narrowly won the state last year. “Trump is not on the ballot, so his supporters won’t be nearly as enthusiastic. Trump’s ability to raise money will be severely handicapped by his loss of the White House.”
But a second Republican operative in Washington, D.C., said Trump should be discounted only at the doubters’ peril and remains the “unquestioned leader” of the party. The focus of the midterm elections, the operative said, will be Biden and the razor-thin Democratic congressional majorities, with Trump serving mainly as an extra motivator for GOP turnout.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Trump’s support among rank-and-file Republicans remains strong, according to most polls, though other figures, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are ascendant. An NBC News poll last month found more Republicans saying they supported the party more than the former president for the first time since 2019.
Republicans are hoping to recapture their congressional majorities next November after losing the House in 2018 and the Senate earlier this year.
