Representative Liz Cheney, in remarks at the American Enterprise Institute, had this to say about Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy:
There was a moment right after [January] 6 when if Kevin McCarthy had said, ‘This is completely unacceptable, this will not happen, we are going to — clearly this was an impeachable offense, and we need to look to the future. We’re going to impeach.’ He should have been convicted. If that had happened, we would be living in a very different country right now. But instead, Kevin McCarthy decided to go to Mar-a-Lago and welcome Donald Trump back into the party.
The central problem with this counterfactual is that it gets things backwards. McCarthy’s visit to Mar-a-Lago did not solidify Donald Trump’s grip on the party, but rather, Trump’s grip on the party forced McCarthy to make nice in Mar-a-Lago.
By all indications, McCarthy is a leader of House Republicans only in title. He does not have the power to stake out a position and somehow sway members of his caucus to that position. Had he taken the Liz Cheney position after January 6, he still would not have rallied enough Republican votes against Trump, and he likely would have been ousted from leadership. The party would likely be in the same place now, only McCarthy would be like Cheney, giving remarks from the outside looking in.
The core issue is that a solid contingent of Republican voters believe the election was stolen, and they still support Trump. And there is no authority who can convince them otherwise. If McCarthy or other titular “leaders” of the party did try to use their positions to convince people that President Biden was legitimately elected, they would immediately become suspect among these voters.
This is why I have come around to the view that the only way for Trump’s grip on the party to loosen is for him to run for the nomination and lose.