A telltale sign of how things are going for the Republican Party was recently released to public view on Capitol Hill.
You can usually guess how bad things are going one way or the other when they start eating theirs.
TRUMP SAYS LIZ CHENEY “IS ONLY FOUND” BECAUSE HE IS LEADING US FROM “RIDICULOUS AND COSTFUL WARS WITHOUT END”
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Speaker of the Republican Conference of the House of Representatives, recently received the bill from some of the more conservative members of the House and Freedom Caucus.
It is almost unprecedented in Congress that members openly attack a high-ranking member of leadership. They usually have such disputes within the family. But conservative criticism of Cheney erupted at a meeting of the Republican Conference last week. Some conservatives accused Cheney of being too respectful of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s directives when it came to fighting the coronavirus. Others questioned Cheney for his opposition to the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Germany.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, also chided Cheney for backing up his main challenger Todd McMurtry last month. President Trump denounced Massie as a “third-rate Grandstander” on Twitter in March and implored other Republicans to “kick Massie out of the Republican party.” But before the primaries, racist social media posts emerged from McMurtry. Massie prevailed at the polls. Cheney told Massie that he should speak to the President. But Massie said her problem was with her, not with the CEO.
After the controversial Republican Conference meeting, Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, stepped up matters on Twitter. He tweeted “Liz Cheney has worked behind the scenes (and now in public) against @realDonaldTrump and her agenda.”
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Donald Trump Jr. then continued. He tweeted: “We already have a Mitt Romney. We don’t need another. “
Cheney ignored the criticism of the President’s son.
“Donald Trump Jr. is not a member of the Republican House Conference,” Cheney said. “I take my position very seriously.”
In 2012, the Republican National Committee launched an “autopsy” to study why the Republican Party lost the presidential election to President Barack Obama. A resounding theme of that study was that the party lacked connection to minorities. In the era of President Trump, there are signs that Republicans are fighting to woo suburban women and professionals.
There are only 13 Republican women in the House. Two are retiring: Representatives Susan Brooks, Republican of Ind., And Martha Roby, Republican of Ala. Cheney is the highest-ranking Republican woman. It is not a good look for the Republican Party when a faction within the almost exclusively white Republican Male Conference attempts to oust the only woman from her top leadership position. Republicans need to diversify if they are to hold up against a shifting seismic demographic shift.
There are various theories as to why the attack on Cheney escalated lately:
“There is a growing feeling that we are going to lose this election big and I think they are lining up someone to blame,” said a Republican in the House of Representatives who asked not to be identified. Liz is the sharpest knife in the drawer. Everybody knows. She is sincere and unshakable in her beliefs. If Trump loses, Liz will get the Republican Party out of the desert. “
Let’s explore a complex fabric of Cheney state in the party, its future trajectory, and the Republican Party itself.
Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., Is retiring early next year. Cheney fiddled running to Enzi’s seat. But the congresswoman finally decided to give up that contest.
“I think I can have the greatest impact for the people of Wyoming by remaining in the leadership of the House of Representatives and working (to) take our Republican majority,” Cheney said in January.
Some analysts believed that Cheney’s long-term prospects were better in the House than in the Senate. The argument was that it was not a done deal that Cheney could even secure the Republican nomination for the Senate. Former Representative Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyo., Runs and ordered the support of many conservatives from the start. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, supported Lummis for the Senate contest. Paul also joined the fray attacking Cheney last week. Paul has long criticized Cheney and his father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, for what the Kentucky Republican characterized as “endless wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is possible that Cheney could have faced a bitter primary fight with Lummis. Some Republicans have long argued that Cheney could become Leader of the Republican House of Representatives or, if the party claims the majority in the future, speaker. There are other Republicans who will say privately that they believe Cheney could defeat California House Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy, or California Republican minority scourge in a leadership contest. However, a source with a deep understanding of the House’s republican internal politics rejected that notion.
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That said, there are arguments that Cheney could be well positioned for herself, and for the party, if President Trump failed in November.
If you look at the polls, Republicans are looking at the very real possibility of a post-Trump world.
Most House conservatives were initially reluctant to support Trump when he ran for president in 2016. But after his unexpected victory, many Republicans took a risk and sided with the president. They discovered an opportunity to repeal and replace ObamaCare, advance a tax reform bill, and supply the Supreme Court with conservative judges. McCarthy and Scalise soon rushed to the side of the President. McCarthy earned the nickname “My Kevin” from Mr. Trump. Earlier this year, President Trump asked Scalise to reject a bill to renew National Surveillance Programs (FISA) that many Republicans previously endorsed. Republican support for the FISA bill disintegrated in minutes, and the measure stalled.
But, if Democrats defeat Republicans at the polls this fall, the Republican Party will do a soul-searching. There may be a backlash against Republicans who lined up too close to President Trump. And if President Trump loses, the party has likely won the popular vote in a presidential contest only once since 1988.
Sometimes there are recriminations for party leaders after the tsunami elections.
Several Republican sources who asked not to be identified believed that House conservatives moved against Cheney in an effort to protect McCarthy and Scalise. Remember, there is a reason why McCarthy did not become Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2015 when former Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, surprised his colleagues and retired. And much of these shots at Cheney and his future potential are mired in infighting for the leadership positions that plagued Boehner.
Freedom Caucus leader and current White House chief of staff Mark Meadows launched an effort to oust Boehner from office in July 2015. Once Boehner left, McCarthy did not have the votes to become president. Republicans then recruited former Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, to enter the speaker’s room. Ryan reluctantly did so after initially saying he would not make a move for the speaker. In short, Ryan was the only House Republican who had enough support from all sectors of the Republican Conference. Otherwise there would be blood on the floor.
The same internal Republican disputes that helped bring Boehner to the door echo in the volleys shot at Cheney today.
Multiple current and former members of the House told Fox that some of the attacks on Cheney were due to male member sexism. Some even compared the attacks on Cheney to the profane verbal attack launched by Rep. Ted Yoho, Florida, against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y.
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“They treat us differently,” said a former Republican woman in the House.
There are many explanations for the dissonance about Cheney. But a Republican source had another theory:
“Gaetz and some of those guys,” confessed the GOPer. “They are fucking crazy.”
