Peggy Noonan is one of those people who can manage to make a terrible argument even when she’s basically right. She’s excited that Liz Cheney managed to survive a challenge to her House leadership role despite voting to impeach Donald Trump. She thinks this is a hopeful development, and I’d agree that it is at least not a negative one. But Noonan is missing something that should undo her optimism.
Liz Cheney won. She won’t lose her leadership position after her blistering statement supporting the impeachment of Donald Trump. The vote in the House Republican Conference Wednesday night wasn’t even close, it was reportedly 145-61. Her antagonists spent two weeks bragging they had it in the bag. She insisted on a vote and called their bluff. Suddenly people remembered: She was raised by a House whip.
What does it mean? It doesn’t turn the page on the Trump era in Congress but it does, tentatively, begin a new chapter. The pro-Trump group lost, and the We Exist in the Time After Trump forces won. The lopsidedness of the vote implies some sympathy for Ms. Cheney’s stand, or at least grudging respect for the idea of a vote of conscience. Some were likely glad to see someone stand up to a bully, even if they won’t. Some may have been thinking: Hmmm, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to offer quiet encouragement for an insurrection that left five people dead.
The problem is that the House Republicans were grappling with two issues. One was about Cheney’s leadership position (which is really about whether it’s acceptable to criticize Trump) and the other was about QAnon lunatic Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments. Taylor Greene really should be expelled from Congress, but 11 House Republicans voted with every House Democrat to at least kick her off her committees. Liz Cheney voted to let her keep them.
This makes it impossible to say that Cheney exists “in the Time After Trump.” It also demonstrates that Cheney has a very selective conscience. In any case, according to a The Hill/HarrisX poll 64 percent of registered Republicans say they’d prefer to belong to an independent party led by Trump. As for Greene, she lost her committee assignments despite Cheney’s support, and she’s completely unrepentant.
She added that “The party is [Trump’s]. It doesn’t belong to anybody else.” After Greene’s morning press conference, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida told Fox News, “That was so good I almost had to smoke a cigarette afterwards.”
So, I don’t see what was accomplished by Cheney retaining her leadership position. She’s not standing up to Trump. She’s not leading the party to some post-Trump future. She probably has no future.
People like Peggy Noonan really, really, really want there to be a “We Exist In The Time After Trump” caucus in the RepubliQan Party. The problem she and others have is that it is not going to take long before this whole charade they are trying to keep pumped with oxygen dies a very inglorious public death. The GOP is now a zero sum Party, Peggy just does not seem to realize it yet.
“Yer’ either with us, or agin’ us”.
MTG & Matt Gaetz are correct. The Party is Trump’s; lock, stock, and barrel. There are going to continue to be inflection points for those who are whispering in hushed tones to friends, in private, their dislike of Trump and what he is doing to the GOP and the country. But they will continue to be called upon to publicly and enthusiastically embrace and endorse the Trump Doctrine. As long as they are silently obedient, everything will be okay for them. Time will take care of either sifting them out or more fully mixing them into Trump Party. Some will go down through primary challenges, and others will take the tried and true “not running again so I can devote more time to my family” caucus. But there is little doubt that anyone who is not unquestioningly obedient to Trump will be driven from the Party, one way or another. Give them enough time, and they will eventually have Liz Cheney’s head on a pike outside Mar-a-Lago. And MTG and Matt Gaetz will be there dancing around it.
And just what is the Trump Doctrine? I don’t see him standing for anything other than his own egoism.
Fascism and christian nationalism (but I repeat myself).
No ‘probably’ about it, she has no future. It’s guaranteed she gets her political advice from her father, and it was a cosmic blunder. She loses in two years. The Republican Party is far beyond the Bush generation, and it seems they now know it. Shoot, it’s now beyond Pence, and he ‘was there’!
Who does she lose to in 2 years, because it won’t be a Democrat.
She’ll lose in the primary. But if things don’t improve for her quickly, she won’t run.
So you think someone Trumpier will run and beat her, or a “sane” Republican?
Give Liz a couple of years. She’ll become a Democrat.
Trump was the culmination of modern Republicanism. And they are in denial.