There’s plenty of blame to go around for Congress’s ill-advised efforts to overturn the states’ certified election results. The sight of Missouri Republican Josh Hawley smugly pumping his fist in salute of a mob that went on to storm the Capitol and murder a police officer kept the spotlight shining on his role in the pro-Trump challenge. But the role of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy should not be ignored, either.
Make no mistake: Anyone who promulgated President Trump’s lie that the election was stolen from him is unfit to serve as the House minority leader. The experiment of Trumpism proved a political failure, with the Republican Party losing its control of the White House and both chambers of Congress while achieving few legislative gains. If the GOP wants to score a comeback, its divorce from Trumpism must mean much more than a mere divorce from Trump. McCarthy must go, at a minimum, from House leadership.
Luckily for Republicans, they have an obvious candidate to replace him in Liz Cheney.
As House Republican Conference chairwoman, the Wyoming congresswoman is already the third-highest ranking member of House Republican leadership. Despite her foreign policy hawkishness resulting in some intraparty quibbles, Cheney navigated the Trump era without either debasing herself with the stench of unquestioning Trumpism or alienating herself politically a la Mitt Romney. Despite her short tenure in Congress, Cheney has already proved that her political instincts are those the party needs.
She, not McCarthy, led the party’s rejection of the racist Rep. Steve King, and she held strong in recognizing Joe Biden as the legitimately elected president. And as the pandemic rages on, it’s worth having the Republicans who saw the crisis coming in the party’s driver’s seats. While her colleagues were dismissing the coronavirus last year, Cheney was one of the few urging immediate preparation.
One can’t bring up the name “Cheney” without addressing the elephant in the room. Cheney’s foreign policy is obviously far out of step with the Trump doctrine, which even most of Trump’s critics acknowledge as a valid course-correction toward realism and away from the failures of the Bush administration. Republicans should not go back to that foreign policy vision, but the Republican Party, as a political vehicle of conservatism, is on life support. Cheney is still the best bet to replace McCarthy.
