If all historians know about Liz Cheney one hundred years from now is that she voted to impeach Trump and bloviated about the Big Lie, she will be less than a foot note. It is, thus, absurd that liberal media (like Jimmy Kimmel) and GOP moderates (like Larry Hogan) are morally outraged by her ouster as Republican conference chair. It is a purely political position and a prudent political decision to replace Liz Cheney (R-WY) with Elise Stefanik (R-NY).
Stefanik is a Harvard-educated moderate, who first gained attention recruiting electable GOP women for House seats (in 2020, her E-PAC grew their ranks from 13 to 31). In 2014, Stefanik became the youngest woman EVER elected to Congress and Cheney lost her bid for one of Wyoming’s senate seats. In 2016, Stefanik ran for re-election without uttering Trump’s name, and Cheney said, “no question Trump is the better choice” – and rode his long coattails (67.4% of state’s vote) into Congress.
Stefanik claimed Cheney lost her chair because she “was looking backwards” when the party should be “looking forward…unified…working as one team…talking about conservative principles.” To this end, Stefanik acknowledged Trump’s “an important voice in the Republican Party.” Cheney said Stefanik “is wrong…Trump continues to threaten [our] democracy.” And that sums up Cheney’s congressional career: voting to impeach Trump and hating his Big Lie theory.
After Cheney got chucked as conference chair, Governor Larry Hogan (R-MD) accused congressional Republicans of “doubling down on failure.” His defense of Cheney was that she’s “a solid conservative who voted with the president 93 percent of the time” and “stood up and told the truth.” Reagan speech-writer Peggy Noonan claimed Cheney confronted “a house of cowards” and Elise Stefanik allowed “the boys to swap her for a woman who stood [for] principle.”
That too is pure politics – not principles – because Hogan and Noonan were Splinter Republicans long before the January 6 riots. They said and wrote anti-Trump comments, admitted not voting for him, and whined about where he was taking the party in 2020. I am not for a loyalty oath, but Larry and Peggy don’t speak for 74.2 million Trump-voting Republicans. A Maryland governor, New York columnist, and neocon hawk (Cheney) are NOT today’s Republican Party.
Governor Hogan agrees with Cheney: Democrats did not game the 2020 election. How can he be so sure when 70% of Republicans say the election was not “free and fair” and 84% say election changes helped Biden (source: Morning Consult)? How can a governor voting in Maryland or a rep voting in Wyoming have witnessed as much as 62 million voters spread across America? Maybe the real Big Lie is saying 62,000,000 US citizens were duped by one orange-faced man.
Maybe Cheney’s out because Stefanik is a better GOP strategist. Maybe the GOP tired of the “unrepentant war monger,” as suggested by Senator Ran Paul (R-KY). She said zilch in 2016 when Trump promised to stop “endless regime-change wars,” rode his coattails, and went on TV in 2019 to say her job was to ensure President Trump “does not walk away” from Afghanistan. Hogan can praise Cheney’s truth, but supporting the War on Terror at any cost ($6.4 trillion) is the real Big Lie.
Splinter Republicans (like Noonan) say the GOP is lost in a cult of personality, when it’s probably just tired of Cheney’s war – and Trump included that in his parting shot: “she is a warmonger whose family stupidly pushed us into the never-ending Middle East disaster, draining our wealth and depleting our Great Military, the worst decision in our country’s history.” It is possible Trump is just anti-war and the pro-Cheney spin is just anti-Trump.
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel claimed Republican hypocrites were “cancelling” Cheney, and Governor Hogan claimed “free speech” was at stake – except Cheney rushed onto ABC’s This Week (May 16) to boast, “I won’t be part of whitewashing what happened on January 6.” Liz Cheney is a tool of the pro-Biden camp for now, and if there’s one thing the left loves, it’s a useful idiot spreading the inside poop on the GOP- and that’s why Cheney got chucked.