The GOP is waking up today with a new slogan: “The Party Of Trump.” To some, it may not seem like anything has changed, given that the former president has had his foot on the throat of the Republican Party ever since he won the 2016 election. But this moment feels different.
The Republican House Conference took less than 20 minutes on Wednesday to give Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney the boot from her post as chairperson. When she once again criticized Trump and his election lies before the decisive vote, she was actually booed by some of her colleagues. That’s how Cheney’s tenure as the third-ranking member of the GOP ended.
Hours after presiding over that vote, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was in the White House meeting with President Biden. Afterward, he actually had the temerity to give this response when asked about the legitimacy of Biden’s election victory.
McCarthy’s shameless attempt to gaslight America is even more insulting when you consider the main reason Cheney is out is because ONE PERSON in particular — former President Trump — continues to question the legitimacy of the November election, despite zero evidence to back up his lies.
Cheney was the last significant voice in the Republican Party that would muster any kind of resistance and defiance to Trump. As the third-highest ranking party member, her words had weight. Or at least, they should have. But by casting her out, McCarthy, Steve Scalise and the other ranking members made it clear there is no room in the GOP for anyone who doesn’t fall in step with the party message. And that message is loud and clear: This is Trump’s party, full stop.
The DNC trolled its rivals across the aisle with an evening spectacle in Washington D.C. Wednesday night. The DNC projected the images “Republican Party = Party of Trump” and “Welcome to RNC HQ” on Trump International Hotel.
This NY Times opinion piece by Peter Wehner spells out quite well why Cheney felt like she had to take on her own party. She felt the party bending the knee to Trump would be its death knell.
Also in that piece, Wehner writes this scathing paragraph that underscores how corrupted the GOP has become in its desperate bid to stay on Trump’s good side.
“The takedown of Representative Cheney was not an “inflection point,” as some have called it. It was the opposite — the latest (but it won’t be the last) confirmation that the Republican Party is diseased and dangerous, increasingly subversive and illiberal, caught in the grip of what Ms. Cheney described in The Washington Post as the “anti-democratic Trump cult of personality.”
With Cheney removed from her seat of power within the party, and her House seat in legitimate jeopardy when she comes up for re-election next year, the Party Formerly Known As The GOP has neutered its loudest dissenting voice against Trump and the dishonest agenda he continues to push. Sure, there are other members, such as Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, who have taken public stands against Trump’s election lies, but Cheney had legitimate sway in the party. She’s practically Republican royalty, or at least she was.
Her fall from grace is as sure a sign as any you’ll see that the Republican Party as we once knew it, is dead and buried.
