It’s increasingly looking as though Cheney will have a difficult time remaining in leadership.
Much of the debate over whether Representative Liz Cheney should remain in Republican leadership has divided those who agree with her statements about the 2020 election and those who see them as tantamount to betrayal. But there’s also a third position — which is that she’s right, but is now too unrepresentative of her party to help lead it. That, in itself, is a sad reflection of the state of the Republican Party.
It’s increasingly looking as though, having survived one attempt to oust her as conference chair, Cheney will have a difficult time remaining in leadership. Her repeated statements affirming the legitimacy of the 2020 election and assailing Donald Trump’s role in the January 6 Capitol riot have been a thorn in the side of House minority leader Kevin McCarthy. The tension became public today, when McCarthy went on Fox and said, “I have heard from members concerned about her ability to carry out the job as conference chair to carry out the message.”
Cheney’s office shot back pointedly: “This is about whether the Republican Party is going to perpetuate lies about the 2020 election and attempt to whitewash what happened on January 6.”
Those are not the words of somebody trying to cling to a leadership position. Whatever the merits of Cheney’s stance, there is an argument to be made that anybody in leadership has to try to represent the pulse of the caucus and to focus all fire on the other party while shilling for one’s own. Every time Cheney sends a tweet or answers a question breaking with her party on Trump, it puts other party members in a difficult place, adding fresh fuel to a subject McCarthy would like to see go away.
So, it makes sense to say, Cheney can no longer serve in leadership. But what that means in practice is that the Republican Party is still so under the thumb of Trump that consistently acknowledging reality about the election disqualifies somebody from leadership.
There are some who may argue that Cheney’s foreign-policy views are at odds with the growing non-interventionist sentiment on the right. While true, it’s not the central reason that she may be forced from leadership. Cheney could be in favor of withdrawing from Afghanistan, and as long as she vocally challenged Trump’s narrative of the election, she’d be facing the same problem. On the flip side, if she were completely onboard with the Trump narrative, she’d be safe, regardless of her military hawkishness.
It’s clear what this is about. Cheney doesn’t believe the election was stolen and sees Trump’s ongoing efforts to deny the legitimacy of the election as a bad thing for her party and for the country. And she is willing to say so. Not just once during a brief moment when it was popular for Republicans to say so. But repeatedly — when asked about it in press conferences, and in talks, and in tweets when not directly prompted by a reporter. This is inconvenient for her party.
In a normal world, the party might actually reconsider fealty to Trump. After all, had Trump simply acknowledged defeat last November, Republicans would have had a good chance of maintaining at least one Georgia Senate seat. And they could have united in opposition to President Biden’s agenda.
Instead, Trump spent months riling up the base to pressure Republicans into staking out an extreme position that culminated in the Capitol riot. And it is not Cheney who is primarily responsible for keeping the 2020 controversy alive. It is Trump himself, who uses every moment he has in the public spotlight to repeat his lies about the election being stolen. The 2020 election issue may be uncomfortable for Republicans. But it is only uncomfortable because Trump won’t let them get away with ignoring it.
In the current Republican Party, Trump can continue to say untrue things that distract from the real issues, but the person who points out that they are untrue is the one who gets attacked for becoming a distraction. It’s a sad state of affairs.