Uppity Woman Driven from GOP Leadership Post

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

"In today's Republican Party, there is no greater offense than honesty."

    Jeff Flake, former Republican US Senator from Arizona 

This morning Republican members of the US House of Representatives made good on their threat to remove Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyoming's only member of the House of Representatives, from her leadership position within the House.   Her unforgivable offense:  failure to support the last Republican president's big lie that he actually won the 2020 election and that it was stolen from him.  Cheney also continued to correctly link the former president to the January 6th attack on the Capitol.

Meanwhile Matt Gaetz, another Republican member of Congress (but one who supports the bogus claims of the former president - and is a male), is still serving on the prestigious House Judiciary Committee, even though he is reportedly under investigation by the FBI for sex-trafficking.

Cheney faced a similar attempt to remove her from her House leadership position back in February, but at that time she handily won a secret ballot to retain the position by a vote of 145-61.  Today's vote was held in a different manner, perhaps to avoid the embarrassment of a close result or of the possibility of Cheney again winning the vote.  Today the caucus used a "voice vote" rather than a "roll call" or a "secret ballot."  Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado, a supporter of Congresswoman Cheney, said afterward that some wanted a "recorded vote," but that was "not agreed to."  So it would appear that Republican leadership carefully arranged a "vote" that would have no pesky numbers attached to it that the press could then analyze so see exactly how much support Liz Cheney (or party leader Kevin McCarthy) actually could muster.

Democracy, Republican style.

The former president whose persistent lying triggered the events that led to Liz Cheney being politically ostracized by her fellow House Republicans quickly issued one of his mean - and highly projective - diatribes in which he called Congresswoman Cheney "a bitter, horrible human being."   Liz Cheney, a person who will not be silenced, immediately shot back that she would "do everything I can to ensure that the former president never gets anywhere near the Oval Office."

And Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, a former GOP presidential nominee, summed this morning's circus in the House up this way:

"Expelling Liz Cheney from leadership won't gain the GOP one additional vote, but it will cost us quite a few."

Liz Cheney only lost a title this morning, but the Republican Party lost what little credibility it had left - and perhaps its soul as well.