The Party of Lies ‘Cancels’ The Truth, Causes Division Within The Party

The damn fools actually did it. House Republicans oust a defiant Liz Cheney for her repudiation of Trump’s election lies.

House Republicans purged Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from their leadership ranks on Wednesday, voting to oust their No. 3 for her refusal to stay quiet about Donald J. Trump’s election lies, in a remarkable takedown of one of their own that reflected the party’s intolerance for dissent and unswerving fealty to the former president.

The action came the day after Ms. Cheney had delivered a broadside on the House floor against Mr. Trump and the party leaders working to oust her, accusing them of being complicit in undermining the democratic system.

In a scathing speech, Ms. Cheney said that the country was facing a “never seen before” threat of a former president who provoked the Capitol attack on Jan. 6 and who had “resumed his aggressive effort to convince Americans that the election was stolen from him.”

“Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar,” she said. “I will not participate in that. I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy.”

READ: Liz Cheney’s speech on the House floor.

Mr. Trump weighed in on Wednesday morning as lawmakers were gathering to force Ms. Cheney out, saying he was looking forward to the ouster of a woman he called “a poor leader, a major Democrat talking point, a warmonger, and a person with absolutely no personality or heart.” [Looking in a mirror, fool?]

The action came by voice vote during a brief but raucous closed-door meeting in an auditorium on Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning, after Ms. Cheney made a defiant final speech that drew boos from her colleagues.

In her parting remarks, Ms. Cheney urged Republicans not to “let the former president drag us backward,” according to a person familiar with the private comments who detailed them on condition of anonymity. Ms. Cheney warned that Republicans were going down a path that would bring their “destruction,” and “possibly the destruction of our country,” the person said, adding that if the party wanted a leader who would “enable and spread his destructive lies,” they should vote to remove her.

Republicans did just that, after greeting her speech with boos, according to two people present, speaking on the condition on anonymity to discuss an internal discussion. They ultimately opted not to hold a recorded vote, after Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, said that they should vote by voice to show unity.

Emerging from the meeting, Ms. Cheney remained unremorseful, and said she was committed to doing “everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets near the Oval Office.”

“We must go forward based on truth,” Ms. Cheney told reporters. “We cannot both embrace the Big Lie and embrace the Constitution.”

[T]op Republicans have labored to avoid talking about the [January 6 violent seditious insurrection and failed GQP coup d’etat] and have painted Ms. Cheney’s removal as a forward-looking move that would allow them to move past that day. [i.e., to disappear their crimes down the memory hole.]

I assure you, real American patriots will never forget, nor ever forgive the 147 Republican lawmakers who still objected to the election results after the Capitol attack. You are all seditious traitors who must be driven out of office and public life. These fascists must be held accountable.

Instead, the episode has only called attention to the party’s [cult] devotion to Mr. Trump, its tolerance for authoritarianism, and internal divisions between more mainstream and conservative factions [“cancel culture”] about how to win back the House in 2022. All of those dynamics threaten to alienate independent and suburban voters, thus undercutting what otherwise appears to be a sterling opportunity for Republicans to reclaim the majority [by extreme gerrymandering nd Jim Crow 2.0 voter suppression laws.]

Only 50 percent of Republican voters said that they believe Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) should be removed from her role as House Republican Conference chair, according to a Politico-Morning Consult poll released Wednesday.  This means that 50 percent of Republican voters are opposed, an evenly divided party.

NBC News reports, More than 100 Republican former officials to seek reforms, threaten new party:

More than 100 influential Republicans plan to release a call for reforms within the GOP alongside a threat to form a new party if change isn’t forthcoming, a person familiar with the effort said.

The statement, set to be released Thursday, involves a “Call for American Renewal,” a credo that declares that it is imperative to “either reimagine a party dedicated to our founding ideals or else hasten the creation of such an alternative.” The push will include 13 yet-to-be-revealed principles that the signatories want the GOP to embrace.

The move was first reported by Reuters first reported, which cited some of the people involved: former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security; former Transportation Secretary Mary Peters; and former GOP Reps. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, Barbara Comstock of Virginia, Reid Ribble of Wisconsin and Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma. Evan McMullin, a former CIA agent who ran for president as an independent in 2016, is also involved.

A push to channel anti-Trump sentiment with the “Never Trump” movement in the spring of 2016 was largely unsuccessful at the time, and none of the people backing this latest effort are serving as elected Republicans.

They talk a good game, but these Never Trumpers should have formed a new party before the 2016 election. They have been dawdling for five years, to the detriment of the country. They are just as responsible for the January 6 violent seditious insurrection and failed GQP coup d’etat as the MAGA/Qanon cult members. Had they formed a new party to siphon Republican voters, Donald Trump never would have been elected.

One of the organizers is Miles Taylor, a former Trump official who, as “Anonymous,” wrote an op-ed in The New York Times blasting the Trump administration in 2018, told NBC News “We’re going give the GOP one last chance to get its act together and moderate, but we’re not going to hold our breath.”

You damn fool, Trump cultists already engaged in a violent seditious insurrection and failed GQP coup d’etat on January 6. There is no “one last chance” for these criminals. They are a domestic terrorist organization and a threat to national security. It’s game over for them.

Taylor told NBC News. “We’re ready to get out there and fight against the radical elements in the party to try to excise those elements from within the GOP and our national politics and to try to invest in the deeper pro-democracy bench.”

Taylor suggested that the nascent movement will work to back candidates who support its principles, whether they are moderates or independents.

“Enough is enough, and the GOP has had enough time to decide whether it’s going to separate itself from a man who is a chronic loser,” he said, referring to Trump, predicting a “raging civil war” if the rest of the party doesn’t get on board.

Just an empty threat unless you form a new political party yesterday.  It takes a lot of hard work and organization to qualify a new political party for the ballot in all 50 states. You are already well behind the curve.

As for Liz Cheney’s crusade, the Washington Post reports Liz Cheney’s months-long effort to turn Republicans from Trump threatens her reelection and ambitions. She says it’s only beginning.

Rep. Liz Cheney had been arguing for months that Republicans had to face the truth about former president Donald Trump — that he had lied about the 2020 election result and bore responsibility for the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — when the Wyoming Republican sat down at a party retreat in April to listen to a polling briefing.

The refusal to accept reality, she realized, went much deeper.

When staff from the National Republican Congressional Committee rose to explain the party’s latest polling in core battleground districts, they left out a key finding about Trump’s weakness, declining to divulge the information even when directly questioned about Trump’s support by a member of Congress, according to two people familiar with what transpired.

Trump’s unfavorable ratings were 15 points higher than his favorable ones in the core districts, according to the full polling results, which were later obtained by The Washington Post. Nearly twice as many voters had a strongly unfavorable view of the former president as had a strongly favorable one.

[The internal NRCC poll partially shared with lawmakers in April found that President Biden was perilously popular in core battleground districts, with 54 percent favorability. Vice President Harris was also more popular than Trump, the poll showed. Biden’s $1.9 trillion covid stimulus plan and his $2.3 trillion jobs and infrastructure package both polled higher than the former president’s favorability, which was at 41 percent, compared to 42 percent in February.

A person familiar with the polling presentation said many details from the battleground poll did not make it into the NRCC’s 30-minute address in Orlando.]

Cheney was alarmed, she later told others, in part because Republican campaign officials had also left out bad Trump polling news at a March retreat for ranking committee chairs. Both instances, she concluded, demonstrated that party leadership was willing to hide information from their own members to avoid the truth about Trump and the possible damage he could do to Republican House members, even though the NRCC denied any such agenda.

[At] issue: Should the Republican Party continue to defend Trump’s actions and parrot his falsehoods, given his overwhelming support among GOP voters? Or does the party and its leaders need to directly confront the damage he has done?

“She just believes he’s disqualified himself by his conduct, more than it’s any kind of political analysis,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). “If you look at a political analysis, there’s no way this party is going to stay together without President Trump and his supporters. There is no construct where the party can be successful without him.” [An amoral, transactional politician who only cares about power.]

[Cheney] has been willing to sacrifice her House leadership ambitions and put at risk her reelection hopes, allies say, to try to push the party away from the former president. After McCarthy visited with Trump in January in an effort to broker a truce that he hoped could pave the way for a Republican takeover of the House — and, potentially, McCarthy’s speakership — she called McCarthy out for backing away from earlier saying the former president “bears responsibility” for the riot.

Even if she is cast out of power in the House, she has made clear that she will not stop, promising to take her argument against Trump to the campaign trail in Wyoming, where he garnered 70 percent of the vote in 2020. She has told others that blocking Trump from leading the party is a fight she sees as just beginning, no matter how Wednesday’s vote goes.

“The Republican Party is at a turning point,” Cheney wrote Wednesday in a Washington Post op-ed, “and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution.”

Sorry Liz, but that “turning point” occurred in 2015-16 during the Republican presidential primaries when Republican voters chose the racist grifter and con man, and sexual predator, over sixteen other Republican candidates. MAGA/QAnon cult members have clearly chosen lies and alternate reality over “truth and fidelity to the Constitution.” You are way too late.

Even before the Jan. 6 riot, she had been working to stem the threat [of a coup d’etat] she saw in Trump.

“She called me and said, ‘You know, I’m really worried about this. What should we do?’ ” said former U.S. Ambassador Eric Edelman, who worked with her to write the essay by the former defense secretaries. “Liz was a prime mover of the whole thing, really.”

Working closely with her father, former vice president Richard B. Cheney, the congresswoman volunteered to recruit Jim Mattis, the former Marine general who had served as Trump’s first defense secretary; Leon Panetta, who served as defense secretary in the Obama administration; and Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was defense secretary while her father was vice president, Edelman said.

The opinion piece also warned the military that any involvement in election disputes was dangerous. Richard B. Cheney’s role in organizing the defense secretaries soon became public, but the congresswoman’s role was kept quiet at the time.

[In] a Feb. 7 appearance on Fox News Sunday, she leaned into her complaints about Trump’s election denial and role in the riot, even suggesting that he should be investigated by prosecutors for the possibility that he intended to incite an attack against Vice President Pence.

“This is not something that we can simply look past, or pretend didn’t happen, or try to move on [from],” she told host Chris Wallace. “We’ve got to make sure this never happens again.”

[F]or her part, Cheney has continued to maintain that she will win reelection in Wyoming, where she has been censured by the state Republican Party for supporting Trump’s impeachment earlier this year.

She has recently told others that she believes the voters of Wyoming will ultimately reelect her, understanding that assaults on constitutional processes like elections cannot be accepted.

But even her reelection, a much lower ambition, may require a transformation in the Republican Party away from its current dependence on and adoration of Trump.

The Post adds today, Inside Liz Cheney’s plan to take on former president Donald Trump:

Rep. Liz Cheney lost her House leadership position Wednesday, but she aims to become an even more influential political figure capable of weakening former president Trump’s hold on their party — and continuing to push for his purge.

Rather than focusing on whipping votes to save her job as conference chair, the Wyoming Republican this week has been drafting plans for increased travel and media appearances meant to drive home her case that Trump is unfit for a role in the Republican Party or as the nation’s leader were he to run in 2024, according to a person briefed on the plans.

She is also considering an expanded political operation that would allow her to endorse and financially support other Republican candidates who share her view of the danger that Trump poses to the Republican Party and the country, the person said.

[Cheney] has told allies she realizes the effort could take years and cost her donors and even her job. Those aware of her plans, like others for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Cheney is unlikely initially to join with other groups of current or former Republicans who oppose Trump’s role in the party. But she is decidedly against following the path of other Republican Trump critics who have bowed out of public life rather than confront his power over their party, and she has signaled that she is unwilling to moderate her conservative ideological approach.

“She is, I think, the leader of the non-Trump Republicans, and I don’t know how big that group is,” said Bill Kristol, a prominent conservative critic of Trump who chairs the Republican Accountability Project. “It could be 10 to 15 percent of the party, though, and that is a lot of people. It is a fair number of donors, and it has the potential to grow.”

[C]heney has argued that refusing to honestly confront Trump’s actions serves to condone an attack on democracy and the Constitution.

[T]rump’s foes within the party and the conservative movement think there may be an opportunity in the coming months to further reduce Trump’s support before the 2024 presidential nominating cycle.

They note that his standing has faded somewhat among Republican voters and that he remains politically vulnerable, according to polls, in districts Republicans are targeting to win to take over the House next year. They also say that Trump’s bully pulpit is weaker now that he has no access to his social media accounts and that his relevance could simply fade over time.

Thus far, the anti-Trump efforts have been modest — with few surprising or marquee names that are likely to move Republican voters. … One new project, by a group of about 120 activists, including formerly elected or appointed Republicans, is to be launched Thursday. The effort, which will endorse and fundraise for candidates, is led by Evan McMullin, a former intelligence officer who ran for president in 2016 as an independent, and Miles Taylor, a chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security under Trump.

“We are going to articulate an alternative, principles-based vision for the Republican Party,” McMullin said of the effort, which he said eventually could grow into a third party. “Our big message is that the Republican Party has to be reformed or replaced. That is a big departure for a lot of people who are with us.”

Taylor and McMullin, who have each founded separate groups opposing Trump, declined to reveal the names of the signatories before Thursday.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), like Cheney one of the 10 GOP members of the House to vote this year to impeach Trump, also has started a group, called Country First, aimed at recruiting and supporting candidates who oppose Trump in the Republican Party. Kinzinger endorsed a long-shot candidate in a recent congressional special election in Texas who came in ninth among 23 candidates. The Trump-endorsed candidate came in first, with 19 percent of the vote.

Hundreds of people joined a virtual “Rally for Liz” on Tuesday night organized by another Trump-resisting grass-roots group called Principles First, where Kinzinger joined former representatives David Jolly (R-Fla.), Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) and Denver Riggleman (R-Va.) to voice support for Cheney.

[Cheney] intends to distinguish herself from other anti-Trump Republican officials who have fallen out of favor, like former senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who left office rather than face a difficult primary campaign. She has also ruled out the route favored by people like Kristol, who supported Biden in the last election.

Divide and conquer, Liz. It is the only way forward to defending American democracy.