GOP Reps Call on Liz Cheney to Resign as House GOP Chairwoman for ‘Political Witch-Hunt Impeachment’
Numerous Republicans in Congress are calling on Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming to resign from her position as conference chairwoman after she joined Democratic efforts to impeach President Donald Trump this week.
Cheney, who is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, announced her intent to vote to impeach the president, joining Democrats who are eager to make him go away.
A notion among much of the GOP base is that Democrats have been waiting for a pretext such as last week’s Capitol incursion to exile Trump from politics.
Another notion is that Cheney, the third-ranking member of the GOP in the House, herself has been eager to see Trump, Trumpism and Trump supporters banished from the party of her father.
In any event, she signaled her intent to support the Democrats’ second impeachment of the president in roughly a year and launched a blistering attack on him Tuesday.
“The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President,” Cheney said in a statement. “The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not.
“There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution. I will vote to impeach the President.”
The statement reads like melodrama, and it isn’t going over well with people who realize that Democrats are going to go after the GOP no matter how much she or others disavow anything.
On top of that, Trump did not incite those who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, at least not directly.
“We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated,” the president told those gathered in Washington to protest what he and many of his supporters say was a stolen election, according to an ABC News transcript of his speech.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” he said. “Today, we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections.”
As a general rule, conservatives believe that adults are responsible for their own behavior. Those who breached the Capitol did so on their own, and they were disavowed universally, as they should have been.
Cheney represents, to a great many people, an establishment GOP faction that is not at all bothered by complete surrender. Calls by the far left to prosecute her own father for “war crimes” are still heard by those who spent the second term of the George W. Bush administration defending both him and the former president.
It’s apparently water under the bridge for Cheney, but others seem to understand the frustration of the Republican base, which knows appeasing Democrats doesn’t work.
On Tuesday, some Republicans in the House began standing up to the spineless politics of the GOP establishment by calling on Cheney to relinquish her leadership role.
“She should resign her position as a conference chair and should not be serving this conference. That’s it,” Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona told the Washington Examiner. He later told Fox News, “The reality is she’s not representing the conference; she’s not representing the Republican ideals.”
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio echoed those comments, The Hill reported, telling reporters Wednesday, “We ought to have a second vote. … The conference ought to vote on that.”
NEWS: @Jim_Jordan says @Liz_Cheney should be removed as conference chair.
“We ought to have a second vote.”
“The conference ought to vote on that.”— Mike DeBonis (@mikedebonis) January 13, 2021
First-term Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia also called on Cheney to step down from her leadership role in a statement posted on social media.
“I’m calling for @RepLizCheney to step down as Chairwoman of the House Republican Conference. She doesn’t represent Republican voters by supporting this political witch-hunt impeachment of President Trump. She is not connected to the base and is voting for a hurtful lie,” Greene said.
I’m calling for .@RepLizCheney to step down as Chairwoman of the House Republican Conference.
She doesn’t represent Republican voters by supporting this political witch-hunt impeachment of President Trump.
She is not connected to the base and is voting for a hurtful lie.
— Marjorie Taylor Greene ?? (@mtgreenee) January 13, 2021
Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana issued a statement that called Cheney “unfit to lead.”
Please see my statement on Republican Conference leadership pic.twitter.com/0jZn6l5NcX
— Matt Rosendale (@RepRosendale) January 13, 2021
If Cheney today were reciprocating a fraction of the loyalty to the GOP base that it showed her father, she wouldn’t be finding her own colleagues asking her to step down.
Those colleagues weren’t sent to Washington to roll over and play dead, and as of now, they’re standing by the voters. Cheney, meanwhile, is eager to impeach a popular Republican president who has one week left in his term.
As Democrats move forward to try and oust Trump for “incitement of insurrection,” voters on all sides appear to be more or less dug in to their pre-election positions and are not buying what the establishment media is trying to sell them, according to some post-Jan. 6 polling.
Trump’s job approval rating Tuesday was at 49 percent, according to Rasmussen Reports. That is virtually where it was before the election, meaning he hasn’t lost much, if any, favor with voters who Republicans will need in 2022 and beyond.
Today in Social Media Blasphemy:
Congressional Approval Crashes in @Gallup Survey
Congressional Approval – @Gallup – 15% https://t.co/BCd3xVvowC
Trump Daily Job Approval – @Rasmussen_Poll – 49% https://t.co/ob6jVppIns
— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) January 12, 2021
There is also a powerful survey shared in a memo from pollster John McLaughlin to Trump adviser Jason Miller, the Washington Examiner reported.
“[Eighty percent] of Trump voters and 76% of Republicans are less likely to vote for a member of Congress who votes for impeachment,” McLaughlin wrote.
The Republican Party is experiencing a fracture, but it still strongly supports Trump, if polling is indeed accurate.
Those attempting to distance themselves from the disgraceful incursion at the Capitol by blaming it on the president and Trump voters are not seeing things clearly. The dust appears to be settling, and the battle lines haven’t changed for conservatives who know they will be dragged by Democrats and the establishment media whether Cheney attempts to appease those who hate them or not.
Cheney, on the issue of impeachment, is aligning herself with a party that ideologically is connected to censorship, riots, abortion and gun-grabbing.
Those issues, on which Trump fought for them, are seemingly much more consequential to the lives of voters than the actions last week of a mob that doesn’t represent most Republicans.
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