The Republican Party appears to be rallying around both Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Liz Cheney, each of whom recently survived high-profile intraparty conflicts for different reasons.
The pair of lawmakers have faced intense scrutiny in recent weeks. Greene has been in the spotlight for her past social media posts supporting QAnon and other conspiracy theories. Cheney, meanwhile, was rebuked for voting to impeach then-President Donald Trump.
Despite the controversies, each saw her approval ratings rise, embodying the growing gulf between the pro-Trump branch of the party represented by Greene and Cheney’s anti-Trump faction, according to a new poll from Morning Consult that was released on Wednesday.
Greene, who was removed from her committee assignments in a near party-line vote earlier this month, experienced an 11-point boost in her approval rating. The poll, which showed 30% of Republicans view her favorably, is an increase from her 19% favorable rating in the previous iteration of the poll. The newest poll, which surveyed roughly 1,986 registered voters, was conducted between Feb. 5-7, after her removal, while the prior one was conducted one week before she was stripped of her committee assignments. Greene’s unfavorable rating increased from 21% to 23% after she was removed from her committees, but that falls within the poll’s 2% margin of error.
The Georgia lawmaker apologized for her various remarks in a floor speech on Feb. 4, placing blame for her previous support of extreme theories on the media, which she said were “just as guilty as QAnon” of spreading misinformation.
“I started seeing things in the news that didn’t make sense to me, like Russian collusion, which are conspiracy theories also and have been proven so. These things bothered me deeply,” Greene said. “And I realized just watching CNN or Fox News, I may not find the truth, and so, what I did, is, I started looking up things on the internet, asking questions, like most people do every day.”
Greene expressed “regret” for her previous stances and noted that she “stopped believing” in the legitimacy of the online forum when she “started finding misinformation, lies, [and] things that were not true in these QAnon posts.”
Comparatively, Cheney saw her approval rating jump from 15% to 22% and her unfavorable rating decrease from 42% to 36% after the vote to impeach Trump in the same Morning Consult poll.
In light of the backlash to the Wyoming lawmaker’s support for impeachment, the House GOP caucus held a vote to determine whether Cheney should retain her high-ranking leadership position. The final tally of the Feb. 3 vote was 145-61 in favor of keeping her in the No. 3 role.
Both Greene and Cheney have appeared emboldened in some ways following their battles within the party. The day after Greene was stripped of her assignments, she expressed amusement at the retribution she faced.
“I woke up early this morning literally laughing thinking about what a bunch of morons the Democrats (+11) are for giving some one like me free time. In this Democrat tyrannical government, Conservative Republicans have no say on committees anyway,” she said in reference to the 11 Republicans who voted against her, adding, “Oh this is going to be fun!”
Despite being censured by her home state, Cheney has intensified her criticism of the former president and his actions that preceded the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill siege, saying her party “should not be embracing” Trump because he “refused to stand up immediately … and stop the violence.”
“We have to really take a hard look at who we are and what we stand for and what we believe in,” she said over the weekend. “I think when you look at both his actions leading up to what happened on Jan. 6, the fact that he was impeached in a bipartisan fashion, the fact that he lost the presidency, [and] the fact that we lost the Senate, we have to be in a position where we can say we stand for principle.”
The House Republican caucus held a “family meeting” on Feb. 3. Governing as a minority party across all three branches of government, Republicans hope to unite in an attempt to reclaim the House in the 2022 midterm contests, having recently announced 47 targets in the lower chamber. National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Emmer says the party’s game plan is to keep voters fixated on policy throughout the next election season.
“The Democrats control every lever of power in Washington, and we’re going to make sure that every voter is aware of their socialist agenda and how radical the policies are that they’re advocating for, and how those radical policies will negatively impact the lives of middle-class Americans,” he said, adding that he hopes to “embrace” and “improve on” Trump policies in 2022.
