A simmering fight among House Republicans over former President Donald Trump’s role in the party’s future will play out next week in a closed-door battle over who should lead the GOP conference.
Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and staunch foe of the former president, faces a challenge to her role as House Republican Conference chairwoman by lawmakers who say her anti-Trump tweets and comments are not helping the party regain the House majority in 2022.
Cheney and those who support her say she’s saving the Republican Party and the country by steering the GOP away from Trump, who insists the 2020 election was stolen from him.
In a Washington Post op-ed this week, Cheney declared that the party is at a turning point.
“We Republicans need to stand for genuinely conservative principles and steer away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump cult of personality,” Cheney wrote.
Cheney faces opposition from a large faction of Republicans who either support the former president or have no desire to challenge him publicly. Trump remains popular with a sizable base of voters, and he is positioned to wield significant influence in the 2022 midterm elections.
The pro-Trump wing believes Cheney will be defeated.
“The votes are there” to oust Cheney, Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and Trump supporter, told Fox News this week.
Cheney could be out by Wednesday when the House GOP plans to meet for a weekly closed-door discussion.
House Republican leaders are endorsing New York Rep. Elise Stefanik to replace Cheney.
Stefanik is a rising star in the conference who played a key role in defending Trump during his first impeachment trial on corruption charges. She continues to support Trump publicly.
Analysts say the House leadership fight is a defining moment for the GOP’s relationship with Trump.
The move to oust Cheney “reaffirms Trump’s dominance over the Republican Party,” nonpartisan political analyst and pollster Ron Faucheux told the Washington Examiner.
Cheney has been increasingly at odds with the two top Republicans in the House: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, both Trump supporters.
McCarthy talked GOP lawmakers out of removing Cheney from leadership in February after Cheney voted, along with nine other Republicans, to impeach Trump on the charge of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Both McCarthy and Scalise have grown increasingly frustrated by Cheney’s vocal opposition to Trump. As conference chairwoman, Cheney is supposed to serve as the chief messenger for Republicans in the House.
Rather than projecting unity, McCarthy and Scalise saw Cheney using her leadership role to divide the GOP conference over Trump.
The last straw may have been this week when Cheney tweeted criticism of Trump’s statement declaring the 2020 election “the big lie.”
Cheney quickly tweeted in response that anyone making such a claim “is turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”
GOP lawmakers soon began clamoring for a new closed-door vote to oust Cheney when the House returns to session next week. This time, neither McCarthy nor Scalise defended Cheney.
“There are a large number of members who just said they gave her a second chance, and they feel like they got burned,” Scalise told Fox on Thursday.
Scalise has publicly endorsed Stefanik, declaring that she will use the role to help the House Republican Conference win back the majority in 2022.
Stefanik, once the youngest woman elected to Congress, told Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast on Thursday that she would work to unite the GOP conference and, rather than rejecting Trump, would “run with support from [Trump] and his coalition of voters, which was the highest number of votes ever won by a Republican nominee.”
The party, she said on the podcast, “needs to maintain those voters,” who backed Trump in record numbers, saying, “We are growing the party, and we are building off the Make America Great movement.”
Stefanik’s views match those of many House Republicans who believe they must secure the backing of Trump’s base of voters to win in 2022.
It’s a big reason Cheney aggravated Republican lawmakers even after they voted in February to give her a second chance in the leadership.
Cheney picked a fight with Rep. Jim Banks, who chairs the largest House GOP faction, the Republican Study Committee.
Cheney trashed a key memo authored by Banks, an Indiana Republican, that mapped out a plan to win in 2022.
The “Working Class Memo” called on the party to broaden its electorate and “hug the agenda that differentiated President Trump in 2016 and supplement it with new, relevant ideas.”
Cheney called the memo “neo-Marxist.”
A GOP aide defended Cheney’s criticism, saying that she opposed “favoring one group over another,” and said the memo authored by Banks would not unify the party or win back voters who did not support Trump.
Trump issued a statement backing Stefanik and taking aim at Cheney.
“Liz Cheney is a warmongering fool who has no business in Republican Party Leadership,” Trump said. “We want leaders who believe in the Make America Great Again movement and prioritize the values of America First. Elise Stefanik is a far superior choice, and she has my COMPLETE and TOTAL endorsement for GOP Conference Chair. Elise is a tough and smart communicator!”
Trump remains popular among Republican voters, some polls show.
A national survey of GOP voters by Fabrizio, Lee, and Associates conducted in March showed that 65% of respondents would either likely or definitely vote for Trump in a GOP primary.
But some analysts believe the GOP’s embrace of the former president will hurt them in swing districts where Republicans hope to win back seats and where Trump is less popular.
“It forces party candidates to carry the former president’s personal baggage in 2022,” Faucheux told the Washington Examiner. “This could mean Republicans will lose a lot of seats to Democrats next year that they would otherwise win.”
