I know I should be disgusted, but now, I’m just amused. From the Washington Post:
As the party met in Salt Lake City this week, the leaders of the Wyoming GOP privately signed a special letter that would allow the national party to financially support Harriet Hageman, Cheney’s primary challenger. The letter officially recognizes Hageman as the presumptive nominee for the seat.
In response to the party passing the “Rule 11” resolution that could fund Cheney’s challenger, a spokesman for Cheney said: “Wyoming Party Chairman Frank Eathorne and the Republican National Committee are trying to assert their will and take away the voice of the people of Wyoming before a single vote has even been cast.”
Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel also worked behind the scenes with David Bossie, a top Trump ally, to author and push a resolution that attacked Cheney’s work on the committee, called her a “destructive” force in the GOP and vowed the party would no longer support her. “We’ve had two members engage in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse. This has gone beyond their original intent. They are not sticking up for hard-working Republicans,” McDaniel said in a joint interview with Bossie at a Salt Lake City hotel where the party is holding its winter meeting.
Actually, smearing shit on the walls of the Capitol is a little non-verbal to count as “discourse” of any kind, but that’s besides the point. And if Ronna No Maiden Name has hooked the RNC onto a king ratfcker like David Bossie, then she truly is lost. But seriously, can anybody really be shocked by this news? (These same people are after Adam Kinzinger, too.) Let’s look at this purely as politics. It is now beyond axiomatic that the Trumpists have won control of the Republican Party. That’s where the power obviously lies. That’s going to be the source of any Republican gains in the midterms. That’s who Kevin McCarthy is going to owe his speakership, if he gets it, which is far from a sure thing.
Now, all these things being equal, why wouldn’t they cast Cheney and Kinzinger into the outer darkness? Cheney represents a few herds of bison and several piles of rocks. Kinzinger’s announced he’s not running in 2022 anyway. In terms of actual political power, neither one of them swings the clout of Uncle Joe Cannon, and he’s been dead since 1926. Liz Cheney is about to find out how little clout there is to be found in the greenrooms of the republic.
She remains the inexcusable spawn of the most inexcusable public man of the latter half of the 20th century. She’s still a vote-suppressing theocrat-of-convenience. All of her thunderations at the former president* have been empty noise. They’ve influenced nobody except television bookers and credulous liberals. What has her actual effect on the country’s politics been? She can’t even keep her own political party from trying to boot her from her congressional district. She’s the flashiest empty suit in a city full of them. Defenestrating Liz Cheney is going to be the easiest thing Kevin McCarthy does over the next year.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
