Why Liz Cheney angers Republicans: The GOP must keep Trump's Big Lie alive for the next election
Last edited Wed May 5, 2021, 12:36 PM - Edit history (1)
The biggest news in Washington continues to be Liz Cheney's ongoing refusal to bend the knee to the former president and formally repudiate her inexplicable fealty to the truth. It's one thing to be investigated by the FBI for paying for sex with minors or to be a blatant white supremacist — these are human foibles that can be forgiven — but to unapologetically assert that Donald Trump's insistence that the election was stolen is a Big Lie simply cannot be tolerated.
I've written before that I believe regardless of whether she is truly incapable of swallowing this election nonsense, Cheney also has a strategy. There is an open "lane" for a Republican woman, especially one with a pedigree like hers, to be the tough conservative who stood up to Trump in the event the magic veil ever falls from voters' eyes. So far that lane looks like it gets narrower every day, but kicking her out of the leadership for telling the truth in the face of massive dishonesty can only add to her heroic luster in the long haul. The worst thing that happens is she is remembered as the Margaret Chase Smith of her day, after the brave senator from Maine who denounced the Wisconsin demagogue Joseph McCarthy long before anyone else had the nerve. There are worse fates for a politician than that.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Republican establishment continues to run around in circles clucking furiously like a brood of barnyard hens, trying to keep Trump and his cultlike following happy. They appear to have decided that their voters require human sacrifices for the cause so Cheney must be thrown over the cliff. (And to think "Democrats are in disarray" used to be a perennial trope. They're amateurs compared to the GOP.)
But when I read Salon's Sophia Tesfaye's piece about former House speaker Paul Ryan, who reportedly really doesn't care for Donald Trump and his shenanigans yet remains glued to his chair in the Fox boardroom, unwilling to utter a peep about what's going on with his party, it occurred to me that it's giving them far too much credit to simply call them cowards. They are much more craven than that. It's not that they are afraid of their Trump-loving constituents who are metaphorically brandishing pitchforks and torches against anyone who dare call the Big Lie a big lie. It's that they are seeing the upside for them personally.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/why-liz-cheney-angers-republicans-the-gop-must-keep-trumps-big-lie-alive-for-the-next-election/ar-BB1gnO4X
I don't know. The Republicans are trying to appeal to a shrinking group of people. But they're a cult of yes men who probably don't know any better.
Here's the big tell on the real reason Republican leaders want to dump Liz Cheney
Analysis by Chris Cillizza
Two things have become very, very clear over the last 24 hours:
1. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney is likely to be removed as the third-ranking Republican in House leadership -- as soon as next week when the House reconvenes.
2. New York Rep. Elise Stefanik is the preferred replacement for Cheney in leadership, with House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (Louisiana) now publicly supporting the Cheney-for-Stefanik swap.
These two developments are quite clearly related -- and revealing.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (California) has said that the reason Cheney appears to be on her way out is because she isn't the best policy messenger for the party. Which, as I noted on Tuesday, is totally ridiculous, since Cheney is a consistent conservative on everything but her willingness to speak out against former President Donald Trump and her vote to impeach him for his role in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/heres-the-big-tell-on-the-real-reason-republican-leaders-want-to-dump-liz-cheney/ar-BB1gnVdQ
= new reply since forum marked as read
