GOP vote strips Cheney of No. 3 post in House

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans voted Wednesday to oust Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming from her post as the No. 3 GOP House leader for her persistent repudiation of former President Donald Trump over his claims that the presidential election was stolen.

Cheney, 54, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has called her decision to publicly fight Trump a matter of principle, warning that allowing him to claim that the election was stolen amounts to an attack on democracy and is destructive to the Republican Party and its values.

"If you want leaders who will enable and spread his destructive lies, I'm not your person; you have plenty of others to choose from. That will be their legacy," Cheney told her colleagues Wednesday morning before ending her remarks with a prayer, according to a person familiar with her remarks who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks. "But I promise you this, after today, I will be leading the fight to restore our party and our nation to conservative principles, to defeating socialism, to defending our republic, to making the GOP worthy again of being the party of Lincoln."

House Republicans, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, have said that her fights with the former president have become a distraction and that she should not serve in a leadership position in which the job is to unify the party as it seeks to combat Biden's agenda and win back the House in the 2022 midterms.

[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1RZ3L5ODd8]

"We, as a conference, must remain focused on stopping Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and President [Joe] Biden's socialist agenda. We stand with hard-working Americans," House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., wrote to colleagues Wednesday. "I want each of you to take a leadership role in exposing the magnitude and devastating details of the Democrats' socialist plan."

There was no roll-call vote Wednesday for the closed GOP meeting after McCarthy said he wanted a voice vote to show "unity." Once the 18-minute meeting was over, Cheney walked up the middle aisle past her colleagues and left the room, according to a person familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private gathering.

Trump publicly reveled in Cheney's ouster.

"Liz Cheney is a bitter, horrible human being. I watched her yesterday and realized how bad she is for the Republican Party. She has no personality or anything good having to do with politics or our Country," he said in a statement.

Despite Trump's repeated claims that the election was stolen from him and the vote earlier in the day to remove Cheney, McCarthy said that no one is questioning the legitimacy of Biden's win.

"I think that is all over with," McCarthy told reporters after a meeting at the White House with the president and congressional leaders. "We're sitting here with the president today."

[Gallery not loading above? Click here for more photos » arkansasonline.com/513cheney/]

McCarthy voted to contest the certification of Biden's victory and signed on to a Texas lawsuit seeking unprecedented judicial intervention in disallowing millions of votes and the election results from four key swing states that went for Biden.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a leading member of the House Freedom Caucus, said that while he recognizes Biden as president, he still cast doubt on the vote that landed him the White House.

"Under our system and the way it works, he's the president," he said. "I do think we should look at the election results, but yeah, he's the president of the United States. I've said that all along."

Cheney is expected to be replaced by Rep. Elise Stefanik, of New York, a one-time moderate turned Trump loyalist. Trump and Republican leaders have endorsed her candidacy for conference chairwoman. A vote is expected Friday.

"I know firsthand the discipline and message it takes to fight back against the biased national media and the entire Democrat and Far-Left infrastructure," Stefanik said Wednesday in a letter to colleagues officially announcing her candidacy.

But Stefanik's expected ascension has brought its own set of problems with some conservative members arguing her moderate voting record makes her a poor fit for leadership. Stefanik opposed Trump's signature 2017 tax cuts as well as some of his environmental policies.

"I think she's liberal," said Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, who does not plan to support her candidacy.

In recent days, Stefanik has done interviews with conservative news outlets to promote herself as an ally of the former president who is focused on the 2022 election. On Wednesday, she doubled down on embracing the Trump claim that 140,000 ballots were improperly cast in Fulton County, Ga., as part of her evolution toward fully supporting the former president.

"I stand by my statement on the House floor in January, and I stand by my statement that there are serious issues related to election irregularities in the state of Georgia, as well as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin," she said.

Some in the conference said the party should not rush to vote on Cheney's successor and are promoting the idea of Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, challenging Stefanik, a move his office said he had not ruled out.

"While not ruling anything out, Congressman Roy has never sought a position in conference leadership," a Roy spokesman said. "But if the position must be filled, then this must be a contested race -- not a coronation."

DEMOCRATS' PRAISE

Democrats, who often disagree with Cheney on policy issues, praised her stand and portrayed her removal as a defining moment for the two parties.

"There are but two parties now: patriots and traitors," said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, referring to a quote from Ulysses S. Grant regarding the Civil War.

Democrats also noted that Republicans have made a political issue out of "cancel culture," a loosely defined term regarding someone losing a job or audience because they said something controversial or offensive, but booted Cheney for making them feel uncomfortable with her statements about Trump. Some Republicans noted the hypocrisy as well.

"Liz Cheney was canceled today for speaking her mind," Buck said.

Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump in January on charges that he incited the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol with false claims of a stolen election. Some Republicans demanded that she be stripped of her leadership post over that vote, but she beat back an initial challenge overwhelmingly, with 145 members of the conference supporting keeping her in the position. Only 61 voted to remove her during the closed-ballot vote.

But her standing inside the party that her father once helped lead as vice president quickly fell because of her continued clashes with Trump.

Cheney's few remaining allies in the conference bemoaned the decision to remove her and said there was no real debate during Wednesday's meeting and that the day's business was dispatched with quickly.

"What happened today was sad," said Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, another Trump critic and one of the few Republicans who have publicly defended her. "Liz committed the only sin of being consistent and telling the truth. The truth is that the election was not stolen."

UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Trump remains deeply popular among rank-and-file Republicans, and many in the party are loath to risk alienating the new voters he attracted, especially ahead of midterm elections that historically draw a far smaller slice of the electorate.

"It's impossible for this party to move forward without President Trump being its leader because the people who are conservative have chosen him as their leader," Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said this week on Fox News.

But others warn the episode may further repel voters, especially those in the suburbs who left the party in droves under the former president.

Republican leaders "need to figure out what they're going to do with suburban women because this doesn't put us in the right direction in terms of gaining suburban women," said former Rep. Mia Love of Utah, the only Black woman ever elected to Congress as a Republican.

"There's a cost to everything and I hope that they're willing to understand what the cost of this" is, added Love. "If the cost of having [Cheney] there as conference chair was too high, I hope they realize they're going to pay for it one way or the other."

As a sign of the continued discontent, more than 100 Republicans, including numerous former administration officials, are planning to release a letter later this week threatening to create a new party if the GOP does not adopt a set of principles -- "A Call for American Renewal" -- they lay out, said Miles Taylor, a former Trump Department of Homeland Security official who is one of the organizers.

"We, therefore, declare our intent to catalyze an American renewal, and to either reimagine a party dedicated to our founding ideals or else hasten the creation of such an alternative," they wrote.

Information for this article was contributed by Marianna Sotomayor and Jacqueline Alemany of The Washington Post; and by Jill Colvin, Alan Fram, Kevin Freking and Steven Sloan of The Associated Press.