Within the House Republican Conference, it’s time for a showdown, or, rather, a staredown.
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Whip Steve Scalise, Republican Policy Committee Chairman Gary Palmer, and the ranking Republican in each House standing committee should publicly oppose efforts to purge Wyoming’s Liz Cheney from chairmanship of the House Republican Conference. They should let it be known that party leadership will look askance and perhaps strip House members of valued committee assignments if they support such an intraparty coup attempt.
Furthermore, they should let conference members know that Cheney’s vote of conscience on impeachment, no matter how much they disagree, is far less despicable than many of the bizarrely awful things attributed to the bloody-minded and perhaps anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. A party that rebukes Cheney while not rebuking Greene evinces a loss of moral reasoning.
Some reports say that Trumpian conservatives want to force a vote on dethroning Cheney as early as Wednesday. Bad idea. As the Washington Examiner’s editors explained well in a Sunday editorial, Cheney had ample justification for asserting that Donald Trump bears significant moral responsibility for the U.S. Capitol riot last month and for believing that he should face some sort of consequence. On substance, Cheney’s support for impeaching Trump was certainly within reason. The crowd’s bloodthirsty pursuit of Mike Pence must have left quite an impression upon the daughter of a former vice president.
There are great reasons, both practical and political, not to change party leaders once a new congressional term has begun. In the absence of criminal or clearly unethical behavior, or health reasons, the time for changing leadership is during regular leadership balloting after each national public election.
As a practical matter, it is not an easy thing for leaders to staff up, make plans, and get operations up and running if they’re constantly changing. To do all that again on the fly once a new term has begun would hobble the party’s effectiveness. Worse, if leaders are always looking over their backs to make sure no knives are about to be inserted, their ability to act proactively as the “loyal opposition” is seriously curtailed. If a coup against Cheney is successful, then McCarthy, Scalise, and Palmer might be too busy covering their backsides to take any risks in thwarting Democrats’ agenda.
This is how radical vanguards treat their “leaders,” not how mature officials in a constitutional republic act. Plus, attempted purges send signals both of instability and radicalism that don’t sell well to the broader public.
Those targeting Cheney should learn from the mess that resulted when some Republicans tried to evict Newt Gingrich from the House speakership mid-term in 1997. Gingrich was admirably visionary but also high-handed and mercurial. Yet that hardly justified the coup attempt. The turmoil from the failed attempt, and the unsettled cross-currents of retribution and bitterness, played a significant role in Republicans’ massive political miscalculations the rest of that Congress. Republicans consequently blew what should have been a strong hand in the 1998 midterm elections, losing five seats and nearly losing the House majority when most observers expected the GOP to gain at least another 15 seats.
Moreover, most of the coup agitators found themselves relegated to the political wilderness. Some, like onetime wunderkind Bill Paxon of New York, left Congress altogether. Today’s purge-meisters should consider that fair warning.
Greene is one of the three original co-sponsors of the dump-Cheney movement. The Republican revolutionaries must choose between Greene and Cheney. If they choose Greene, they soon may be unpleasantly reminded that most revolutions eat their own.
