Sometimes things have to get really bad for people to get angry enough to act. Is a reckoning at last on the horizon for the establishment wing of the Republican Party?
The House of Representatives on Wednesday afternoon impeached President Trump, an unprecedented second impeachment of an American president.
The vote was driven by Democrats, but 10 Republicans joined with the majority party in approving the impeachment article that accuses President Trump of “incitement of insurrection” on the basis that his speech to supporters in Washington prior to the breach at the Capitol last week is what motivated them to attack Congress. Those 10 Republicans are Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, John Katko of New York, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan, Dan Newhouse of Washington, Peter Meijer of Michigan, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, David Valadao of California, and Tom Rice of South Carolina.
Of those 10 Republicans who voted to impeach, the most prominent is Liz Cheney, who serves as chair of the House Republican Conference, which hosts meetings and is the primary forum for communicating the party’s message to members. This role makes Cheney the third-highest ranking Republican in the House.
“There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution,” Cheney said in a statement.
Her vote to impeach led to calls for her resignation and removal as chair of the House Republican Conference.
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The House Freedom Caucus on Wednesday began circulating a petition to take her chairmanship away. The petition seeks to force a special conference to debate and vote on a resolution with that aim. It would only take the signatures of 20 percent, or 42 members, of the House GOP to force the meeting. But a majority would be needed for the resolution to be adopted.
Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), vice chair of the House Freedom Caucus and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, is among those backing the petition and calling for Cheney’s removal.
“We ought to have a second vote,” Jordan said in reference to Cheney’s having just been elected to the post in November.
Representative Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), the Freedom Caucus’s chairman, said flatly, “She should not be serving this conference. That’s it.”
Biggs also fired back at Democrats’ effort to oust the president, first by calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and then by impeaching Trump.
“And yet, Democrats want to blame President Trump for the violence that took place at the Capitol — a continuation of a years-long effort to undermine and overthrow the 45th President of the United States. Their partisan and spiteful actions are shameful, serving only to tear our nation further apart and shatter our Constitution,” Biggs said.
Another GOP congressman, Representative Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), released a statement in which he called on Cheney to step down from her important post: “When Representative Cheney came out for impeachment today, she failed to consult with the Conference, failed to abide by the spirit of the rules of the Republican Conference, and ignored the preferences of Republican voters. She is weakening our conference at a key moment for personal political gain and is unfit to lead. She must step down as Conference Chair.”
Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) came to Cheney’s defense on Twitter, but Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) responded that Crenshaw’s is a “minority view in a minority party.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Cheney told reporters at the Capitol Wednesday.
“This is a vote of conscience. It’s one where there are different views in our conference. But our nation is facing an unprecedented, since the civil war, constitutional crisis. That’s what we need to be focused on. That’s where our efforts and attention need to be,” she added.
For far too long, conservatives have been too willing to reelect establishment incumbents who speak the right rhetoric or vote right on a few issues, but who repeatedly betray the electorate when it really counts. Just look at Mitch McConnell, who easily won over 82 percent of the primary vote in his 2020 reelection bid; now the Senate Majority Leader is reportedly considering convicting President Trump when the impeachment is heard by his chamber.
Assuming the Republican Party even survives, which is in doubt in light of rising belief that the party has wrongfully betrayed the president, it’s likely that 2022 will be the year of the outsider, a prime opportunity for true patriots, not career lawyer-politicians, to mount challenges against better-financed adversaries during the primary season and actually have a chance of winning.
Liz Cheney should expect some competition next year.
