When House Republicans declined to oust Liz Cheney of Wyoming as their third-ranking leader, it didn’t get top billing in the media. That went to Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican known for making wild and threatening statements.
Greene, a rookie House member, was stripped by Democrats of her membership on congressional committees, an action Republican leader Kevin McCarthy had refused to take. Nor did McCarthy punish Cheney for voting to impeach former President Donald Trump. House backers of Trump insisted she should have lost her leadership position as a result.
Forget the media’s poor news judgment. The Cheney case was far more important than the Greene episode. Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and author Lynne Cheney, had angered Trump. And he sought to have Cheney fired from her leadership position as if he were the boss of House Republicans.
He’s not. McCarthy, the House minority leader, is. But Trump, while lacking an elected office, is adept at exerting influence on the GOP in Washington and nationwide. And he appears ready to fight for a role that points to a third bid for president in 2024.
The Republican nomination won’t fall in his lap. His political status has diminished. He was a successful president policywise. But he’s been impeached twice, ran a poor reelection campaign, and botched the Georgia election that elected two Democratic senators.
That’s not all. The Republican Party declined on his watch, losing the White House, the Senate, and the House — a negative hat trick. The GOP frittered away two big voting blocs, the suburbs, and independents.
And since losing in 2020, things have gotten worse for Trump. Three months of claiming the election was stolen led nowhere. Promised evidence of fraud didn’t materialize. He lost Twitter. Then came the riots at the Capitol that failed to block President Biden’s Electoral College majority from being “certified.” But between Nov. 3 and Jan. 6, he drove away a few million, my seat-of-the-pants estimate, of onetime Trump voters.
But Trump has one trait that many politicians lack: He never slinks away. He knows the Republican Party needs him. Without Trump and his army, Republicans are no longer 50-50 rivals with Democrats.
According to Politico, Trump has been briefed on all 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment. But Cheney stands out as his target. Trump had singled her out in his Jan. 6 speech. “We’ve got to get rid of the weak congresspeople, the ones that aren’t any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world.”
Her announcement on impeaching Trump more than compensated for his swipe at her. “Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough,” she said. “The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing.”
“None of this would have happened without the president. The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by the president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution. I will vote to impeach the president.”
Whew! That statement was not written to prompt mere discussion. It led to Florida Republican Matt Gaetz’s appearance in Wyoming to take on Cheney. Gaetz is a Trump trooper. “If Liz Cheney had a rally with all her supporters, they could likely meet inside one of the elevators in the Capitol and still have plenty of room for social distancing,” he said outside the Wyoming Capitol in Cheyenne. He said Cheney had done but two things as a House member: “to frustrate the agenda of President Trump and sell out to the forever war machine.” He also labeled her a globalist.
“We were told by Liz Cheney and all of the globalists that if [we] accepted globalism, we would export America’s best crops, best products, best services, and instead, all too often, we are exporting America’s bravest patriots to die in distant lands,” Gaetz said.
When the House Republican Conference voted privately on whether Cheney should lose her No. 3 position, she easily prevailed, 145-61. It wouldn’t have been so lopsided if there hadn’t been a secret ballot, the Trump backers complained. They were guessing.
There’s a question now about her political future. Wyoming is a pro-Trump state. But the Trump appeal is no longer unbreakable. Here’s a helpful comparison. A softer politician wouldn’t have impeached Trump. That Cheney is very tough explains why she did.
Fred Barnes is a Washington Examiner senior columnist.
