Regarding Liz Cheney

First, and on a personal note, I’ve been rather overwhelmed with work in the last week, hence my writing has slowed. There are so many moving pieces in my life right now and I feel like I’m in so little control of any of them that I’ve just hit a wall in productivity. I hope to have more on that shortly and also get back to a healthy sense of normalcy with work-life balance.

Second, I want to write about this Cheney matter. I have a sneaking suspicion there is more too it than is public.

The GOP stood up for Liz Cheney just a few short months ago and suddenly it has gone south. It has gone south at about the same time census numbers have come out giving the GOP a real advantage to taking back the House. It also concurrently comes as Kevin McCarthy has made several trips to Florida to engage in performative leg humping of former President Donald Trump. Now, suddenly, McCarthy is caught on a hot mic bashing Cheney.

My educated hypothesis is that a great deal of the sudden antagonism towards Cheney has to do with placating President Trump in the run up to the 2022 election cycle. My guess is that it has less to do with Cheney in charge of the House GOP Conference — something the GOP was perfectly fine to defend even after her impeachment vote.

By any measure not related to Trump, the daughter of Darth Cheney is a conservative. Her father was the man conservatives went to in the early 2000’s to help scuttle scores of liberal initiatives coming out of squishy “big government conservative” Bush White House employees. Her mother fought the precursor to the Woke Left for years on the cultural front. Liz Cheney has been pretty strong on defense, a reliable Republican team player, and a conservative votes on both fiscal and social issues. She is just having none of the “stolen election” nonsense and has been forcefully, aggressively pushing back on it.

Cheney also helms the part of the House GOP Conference in charge of a unifying message. The GOP has a unified message against the Biden agenda. While the media is fixated on the internal GOP squabbling, if you’re paying attention you’d find the GOP is united from Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney to Marjorie Taylor Green and Rand Paul on a host of issues from being anti-woke to opposing the Biden infrastructure plan.

Cheney has little she needs to do on the united messaging front other than stamp out the crazy, of which there is a lot in the GOP. Republicans just lost the Senate in part because the crazies convinced the base the Georgia runoff would be stolen no matter what and the two candidates did nothing but attack their opponents with claims of socialism while never saying what they themselves would positively do.

It is impossible, however, for Cheney to function if she has lost the confidence of her colleagues who are more interested in allegiance to a man than fidelity to ideas or even truth. I just continue to believe this is less about Cheney pushing back against the stolen election lies and more to do with Republican leaders fearful Trump might undermine their advances next year unless they dispatch Cheney.

To that end, every day the media is focused on the GOP squabbling about Cheney, the GOP and the nation is distracted from a focus on the wokes, the left, and the Biden agenda that has otherwise united the GOP. I’m not sure why this needs to get to a vote unless Cheney thinks she has a majority of the conference. But even if she does, a large and vocal minority that includes the House GOP Leader is out to get her. That puts her in an obviously untenable position and I see no reason she should hang on and force a vote to maintain a position that focuses on unity when she’s the focus of disunity.

Sometimes the greater good of beating the left requires stepping back to avoid distractions. But if Cheney does step back or loses, we all should note she lost in large part because she wouldn’t bend a knee to a lie and the GOP leadership in the House still feels like it needs President Trump to help them win.