This week’s removal of Liz Cheney from House Republican leadership is of monumental, symbolic importance. As with most things, it primarily has to do with Donald Trump. That is, of course, if you believe the mainstream media and its loyal partner, the #NeverTrump commentariat.
According to the haters’ telling, this is yet another moment in the epic struggle for democracy between themselves—the “principled” and “enlightened” conservatives—and the rest of us, the Neanderthals in the Republican Party still in thrall to our dastardly former president. And naturally, any criticism of the honorable Cheney over her behavior only shows that the GOP has become “a cult of personality.”
The real story is far more banal. In truth, Cheney is being removed because she is exceedingly bad at her job as an elected official and leader of the House GOP conference. She disdains her constituents—the very people she is supposed to represent and defend. She is monomaniacally set on endlessly re-litigating her conspiracy theories about the previous administration. Rather than defend her party, its values, or its message, Cheney jumps at the chance to repeat any story or argument meant to discredit the conservative movement, including false ones, in a vain effort to prove that she “isn’t one of those Republicans.”
For example, one of Cheney’s duties is to protect the Republican Party from attacks. When two-thirds of her colleagues in the House, and some of the GOP’s most prominent figures in the Senate, responded to the desires of their constituents by objecting to the Electoral College certification, Cheney rushed to the media to join the left-wing chorus condemning them in the strongest language. She has declared their objections to be ipso facto disqualifying behavior, should any of them ever choose to run for president. And she still routinely likens their desire to scrutinize our new voting regime, which was implemented midstream and removed safeguards, to Nazi propaganda.
Another of Cheney’s duties is to lead the Republican Party on messaging. But her clouded judgment when it comes to anything remotely related to Trump leads her, more often than not, to parrot the mainstream media’s every smear. She reflexively follows the Left in painting the rioters and the idle trespassers alike of January 6 as white supremacist insurrectionists. She practically tripped over herself to publicize the now-debunked story of Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers, in the belief that it would slime Trump.
When it comes to leading on policy, Cheney’s performance is just as horrific. When Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), as Chair of the Republican Study Committee, published a report on how the party can build on Trump’s gains among working-class voters, Cheney blanched in horror. Because its logic touched upon Trump, it therefore had to be disparaged. Noting that the Republican Party under Trump has become the party of the working class, in her view, was practically “neo-Marxist.” The first, most worthwhile plan from her party to chart a course after Trump was too much for her.
None of this is necessarily new, either. Cheney remained the third highest-ranking member of the Republican Party for over two years, despite periodically bashing her party’s president, spreading false smears against her own party, voting to impeach the president, and bashing her party’s policy proposals. If this is a cult, it is the gentlest in history. Regardless, leadership is a duty, not a right. Cheney has no entitlement to lead and to represent a party whose goals and values she so clearly and publicly despises. How can she even be expected to do so?
Even more, why would she want to? Perhaps she doesn’t. Cheney’s single-minded obsession with badmouthing Trump and her conservative colleagues is unhelpful for her party and detrimental to the country. True, it has been helpful for her reputation within elite circles. If Cheney has decided that it is time to leave Congress, her actions have only made the transition to a lucrative consulting gig or media prominent punditry role even easier than it already would have been.
Speaker Pelosi has already commended Cheney for her “courage” and “patriotism.” If this and the mainstream media’s reaction to her ouster is any indication, she will be further welcomed with open arms as a “hero” who speaks “truth to power.” The articles are so predictable they could be perfectly penned in a state of deep sleep.
The vote to remove Cheney is a referendum on one person, and one person alone: Liz Cheney. Her insistence—and that of the condescending elites around her—to make it about Trump only goes to show why she was bad at her job in the first place.
Terry Schilling is the president of American Principles Project. Follow him on Twitter @Schilling1776.