House Republicans voted early Wednesday to remove GOP Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney from her place in the party leadership. The vote marks the final development in Cheney’s estrangement from her GOP colleagues.
The conflict began on Jan. 13, when Cheney, along with nine other House Republicans, voted to impeach President Donald Trump on a charge of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. (In 2019, in the first Trump impeachment, Cheney voted no on both articles against the president.) Cheney’s attention-getting posture in January — she put out a press release announcing her intention the day before, irritating some Republicans — prompted complaints that she wasn’t on board with party leadership. On the other hand, the House GOP leadership knew that, unlike 2019, some Republicans would vote to impeach the president, even though Trump only had 168 hours left in his term. There were no leadership plans to punish any member for voting against Trump. Indeed, Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach kept their positions in leadership and on committees.
But Cheney felt a mission to keep pushing against Trump, even as he became a former president living in Palm Beach. Cheney’s outspokenness grated on some Republicans, and on Feb. 3, some unhappy lawmakers demanded a vote on Cheney’s future in party leadership.
Cheney won a strong show of support, keeping her post by a secret-ballot vote of 145 to 61.
If Republicans were so angry at Cheney for her vote against Trump, how did she win a leadership vote by a more than 2-to-1 margin just three weeks after the impeachment vote, even as Trump was still on trial in the Senate? The answer is, contrary to much media reporting and commentary, Republicans just weren’t that mad at Cheney at that point.
“The press is trying to make this all about Jan. 6, but if it was about Jan. 6, she would have been removed two months ago,” said one House Republican recently.
Now, Cheney, who won by 84 votes in February, has lost a second vote. That means a lot of the 145 Republicans who (anonymously) voted to keep Cheney in leadership in February voted (again anonymously) to remove her now. What happened? Did those members who were OK with Cheney’s impeachment vote back in February suddenly become so angry about it that they now voted to remove her? That doesn’t really make any sense. Why would Republicans be less angry and more tolerant in early February, closer in time to the Trump impeachment, and more angry and less tolerant in May, now that more time has passed?
Were House Republicans somehow not in thrall to Trump on Feb. 3 but in thrall to him now? Again, it just doesn’t make sense.
Cheney’s current problems intensified after the first vote on her leadership, when she intensified her campaign against Trump. Cheney’s efforts were undoubtedly media-friendly — she was portrayed as a profile in courage by some media outlets — but many Republicans came to believe, with some reason, that she had become a distraction from the GOP’s mission to oppose the Biden agenda and win back the House in 2022. Instead, Cheney seemed determined to re-fight the battles of November 2020 to January 2021.
Thus, this leadership vote looks different from the one in early February. “I think a lot of people have changed their minds since the first vote because she just kept it going,” said a second House Republican, who voted to keep Cheney in February but planned to vote to remove her now. “We’re trying to go forward.”
The second Republican also noted that, in his view at least, Cheney’s attacks on Trump reach far beyond the election challenge and Capitol riot. Millions of Republican voters view Trump’s presidency as a time in which U.S. government policy moved in the direction they wanted it to move. Republican lawmakers, prominent among them Liz Cheney herself, voted for the Trump agenda. Many GOP voters appreciate Trump’s accomplishments and believe those accomplishments still stand, even though his presidency ended terribly. Now, they don’t see fighting Trump as a way to further the Republican agenda of opposing Joe Biden and winning back the House.
“I don’t think the party has surrendered to Trump,” the second lawmaker said, addressing a common media talking point. “But we are beholden to those who supported most of the policies that we voted for and agreed with. I’m not beholden to Donald Trump, but a lot of his policies were awfully good for the country, and a lot of people support that.”
For her part, Cheney is now making clear that she has become something of a single-issue politician and that her single issue is Trump. Recently, the Washington Post, citing interviews with a dozen people, reported that Cheney’s “determination to name, shame and banish Trump … had become fundamental to her political purpose.” Now, CNN reports that Cheney is “planning to wage a protracted political war — through public statements and in the media — against the former president.” And it will not just be a war against Trump. Axios recently reported that part of Cheney’s strategy involves “baiting” fellow Republicans over their support of the ex-president.
Those reports, as well as their own personal observations, will confirm to many Republicans that they are right to remove Cheney from her leadership position. They had no desire to punish or exile her when they voted against the effort to remove her in February. But now, Cheney has changed. Why reward with a leadership position a lawmaker who plans to “wage a protracted political war” against her own colleagues? What sense does that make?
