WASHINGTON — Three months ago, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy helped quell a small protest against Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the Republican Party’s most vocal critics of former President Donald Trump, declaring the GOP a “big tent” that was broad enough to include dissenting voices.
But that tent deflated Wednesday morning, when House Republicans led by McCarthy, R-Calif., voted to remove the Wyoming lawmaker as the No. 3 Republican leader in the House.
Shortly after Cheney opened the meeting of the House Republican conference with a prayer, a motion was introduced to remove her from the job. The motion was approved by a voice vote so quickly that some Republicans missed it because they were running late.
There were voices in support of her, but reading the room, those supporters realized it wasn’t worth demanding a vote by secret ballot, said Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who supported Cheney.
“Even the people who voted ‘no’ felt it was unnecessary,” Buck added. “It wasn’t going to change the outcome.”
Cheney, for her part, was prepared for the outcome Wednesday morning, defiantly standing by her message criticizing Trump’s falsehoods about election fraud and his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office,” she said after the meeting.
Cheney’s removal makes it clear that House Republicans view their future as tied to Trump. But it doesn’t put to rest the ongoing tension in the larger Republican Party between a future tethered to the former president and one that moves the GOP forward as the opposition party under the Biden administration.
After months of trying to coexist with Cheney as leader of a party largely aligned with Trump, McCarthy is now the one who has helped build the case for her removal.
“We represent Americans of all backgrounds and continue to grow our movement by the day. And unlike the left, we embrace free thought and debate,” McCarthy wrote in a letter to House Republicans on Monday. “But our leadership team cannot afford to be distracted from the important work we were elected to do and the shared goals we hope to achieve. The stakes are too high to come up short.”
McCarthy quickly moved to build support to replace Cheney with Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., a rising star in the party and outspoken backer of Trump, whose endorsement she quickly received. But some conservatives are crying foul, accusing the leadership of moving too quickly to coronate a lawmaker who, despite her support for Trump, has a relatively moderate voting record — in contrast to Cheney’s consistently conservative record.
The removal of Cheney and the possible election of Stefanik — which has less certainty though she has no declared opponents — represent a hardening of the McCarthy leadership team’s public alignment with Trump, and a sharpening contrast with Cheney.
Some Republicans believe McCarthy had no choice but to remove Cheney, given the influence Trump has on McCarthy’s fellow Republicans. In order to keep his job as minority leader, and to get a promotion to speaker when Republican are next in control, he needs to keep those members happy, explained one Republican who didn’t want to be named discussing intraparty dynamics.
“I think that Kevin was boxed (in), frankly, and I think he did this reluctantly,” Buck said. “Kevin is very aware of the feelings of the base, and I feel like the base of our party has listened to President Trump and there is a lot of feedback to leaders from the base that they don’t like what Liz is doing.”
Cheney has consistently countered Trump’s false statements that the election was stolen and that President Joe Biden was not rightfully elected. Trump’s role in stoking the Jan. 6 insurrection is grounds for the party to permanently break with him ahead of the 2022 and 2024 elections, she says.
But Cheney’s opponents within the House Republican Conference say her insistence on challenging Trump’s election falsehoods is stoking party divisions and damaging the party’s efforts to combat Biden’s agenda.
“Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye Liz Cheney,” Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., tweeted after the meeting concluded.
Cheney’s departure marks the most substantial removal of a Trump opponent from the GOP ranks and the deepening of a fissure among Republicans. And her removal underscores the power of the allegiance House Republicans — unlike their Senate counterparts — still show Trump.
In February, Cheney survived a threat to her leadership position. With the support of McCarthy and other GOP leaders, she was able to hang onto her post. Since then, as Cheney continued to speak out against Trump’s falsehoods about a rigged election, the quiet whispers to oust her grew.
Trump’s support among House Republicans, strong even in February, has only grown since then. And with the chance of retaking the House majority next year staring them in the face, many rank-and-file members feel as though they have little chance without the former president’s support — or at least not with his active opposition.
“You can’t erase Donald Trump or his voters from the GOP and expect to win back the majority in the midterms,” tweeted Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee and an ally of McCarthy.
There are plenty of other Republicans who disagree with the idea of Trump’s electoral prowess in the 2022 midterm election, in which he will not be on the ballot. “Expelling Liz Cheney from leadership won’t gain the GOP one additional voter, but it will cost us quite a few,” tweeted Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, also a critic of the former president.
And other Republicans question whether the House should remove a member who takes a different position on Trump.
“Cancel culture is cancel culture, no matter how you look at it,” said Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa. “I support President Trump and his policies, so I have a slightly different view (from Cheney) on that, but I still think we shouldn’t be trying to cancel voices.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a strong supporter of Cheney’s who has been equally vocal in denouncing Trump’s role in inciting the insurrection, said before Wednesday’s vote that his fellow Republicans would remove Cheney because her position as a truth-teller forced them to defend their position that the election was stolen.
“Cheney is making it uncomfortable for them,” Kinzinger said at an event this week with the National Press Club. “When she’s asked about it, she doesn’t dance around. She just says the election wasn’t stolen, Biden is president, and Jan. 6 was a Trump-inspired insurrection. And that now gins up your local media again, you’re going to have to answer it. And she’s made it uncomfortable.”
Cheney was not twisting arms in an attempt to preserve her job, according to other members, acknowledging that most lawmakers had already made up their minds about her position. She’s pledged to run for reelection, even as Trump is eyeing which of the several Republican challengers he plans to back in an effort to oust her in a primary.
Cheney’s role in the House Republican Conference, chairwoman, was a somewhat vague job title that reflected her position as the third most senior Republican. Her official duties were crafting the House GOP message and, unofficially, hosting a weekly meeting.
The position will now be filled in a new election, which could happen as soon as Friday.
Stefanik says she would focus on keeping Republicans on the same page as “one team.”
“My vision is to run with support from the president (Trump) and his coalition of voters, which was the highest number of votes ever won by a Republican nominee in 2020. We’ve expanded the party,” she said recently on Stephen K. Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. “I’m committed to being a voice and sending a clear message that we are one team, and that means working with the (former) president and working with all of our excellent Republican members of Congress.”
If opposition to Stefanik’s speedy selection grows, the election could be delayed. No other candidate has emerged to challenge her, and Republicans are cognizant of keeping a woman in the job. There are no other women in House Republican leadership.
Stefanik’s critics are sharply opposed to a quick election.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, in a letter to fellow Republicans, said members should “contemplate the message Republican leadership is about to send by rushing to coronate a spokesperson whose voting record embodies much of what led to the 2018 ass-kicking we received by Democrats.”
Roy listed a litany of what he viewed as problematic votes in Stefanik’s record, including opposition to the Republican tax bill in 2017 and support for remaining in the Paris climate agreement and the Democrats’ bill to condemn Trump over a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act.
