Liz is gone!

 

A long held plan to punish the truth telling Liz Cheney, the leading Republican woman in the U.S. House of Representatives, and daughter of former Vice President, Dick Cheney, came to a vote on Wednesday, to oust the third highest ranking member from her role as chair of the GOP House Republican Conference .

Defying Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in her insistence that Donald Trump lied about a stolen election, and the illegitimacy of Joe Biden as president; plus his exhortation of the well planned insurrection on the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6, she has called into question the fealty oath in the GOP, Trump, or nothing, as the party has decided to strip her of her role in a secret ballot, behind closed doors.

Adding to the arena of name calling, bashing, and being “off script'' is that party loyalty is necessary to take back the House in the upcoming midterms, say GOP leaders.

While that may be true, the story is deeper than a mere power play. On one hand, party loyalty is needed as Biden’s popularity and higher ratings are reality, as is his general level of support, (near 60 percent), for his infrastructure and job plans, and overall affability, is making it hard for Republicans to make the case that he needs to be reined in.

McCarthy has done a 360 from the phone call he made to Trump as his office doors were being bashed, and glass being smashed, as the insurrectionists were forcing their way into the capitol. Responding to the call, he replied, "Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are."

The reply from McCarthy: "Who the f--k do you think you are talking to?”

Fast forward, and we then saw McCarthy making pilgrimages to Palm Beach to pledge allegiance to what Meghan McCain has called the “Cheeto Jesus.”

McCain, the daughter of the late John McCain, another female scion of a stalwart Republican family, has gone on to say:  “it’s the most asinine politics I have seen in a really, really long time,” reported The Hill.

She concluded by adding, ominously, “See where this lands us in midterms.”

An important factor is that a woman from a storied family is being bashed, creating a gender gap in the minds of  some Republican suburban college educated women, many of whom voted for Biden in the 2020 election; and turned the tide in earlier local elections, and may do so again in the 2022 midterms, where the entire House is up for election.

Once again from The Hill: “House Republicans are playing to districts that are more ideologically conservative, where crossing Trump will be big fodder for a primary challenger . . .”

Of course this is all catnip for many Democratic officials, and strategists, who hold a thin margin in the House; and, don’t be surprised to see the heir apparent, New York legislator, Elise Stefanik, as a token, who walks the line, a role she has burnished by being a cheerleader for Trump, after public condemnation for his and who vociferously supported him after Jan. 6, despite earlier opposition to his tax cuts.

Former Rep. Barbara Comstock, a Republican of Virginia, noted, “Any woman who would take that position under these circumstances, it’s not going to do well for them or for the party,” adding pithily, “Then it’s OK to be a woman who smiles and reads the talking points. That’s not where you want to be. That’s no equal.”

In short, GOP women are now, in the parlance of the day, “woke”

Ironically, gender warfare, and fractured politics aside, the course of events has turned the head on the so-called, “cancel culture” that Republicans and conservatives decry.

Cheney whose cause has been championed by some liberals, is a purebred conservative, albeit one from the mold set by old school stalwarts such as Henry Cabot Lodge, John Rockefeller, and Mitt Romney, an ally.

This mold has disappeared over the last few decades where the “reactionary” label has been hung from GOP necks, and some see Cheney’s actions, not merely supporting Democracy, patriotic as it be, but perhaps one of several possible paths: a run for the presidency;  becoming an independent, as a check on GOP excess, and if only the former, taking her cause to the bully pulpit as a candidate against Vice President Kamala Harris, the heir apparent, for the 2024 presidential election.

On Tuesday, in what has been labelled as a defiant speech, Cheney said, ""Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar," and. "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."

She also added a warning: "Today, we face a threat America has never seen before. A former president who provoked a violent attack on this Capitol in an effort to steal the election has resumed his aggressive effort to convince Americans that the election was stolen from him," Cheney said. "He risks inciting further violence."