Well, I was wrong again.
For much of the summer, I’d been writing that Donald Trump’s hold on the GOP was shrinking. I thought I was right at the time. But the times changed. Right now, his hold appears to be growing. That’s at least in part because it is the GOP that’s shrinking.
Eight of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the January 6 attack on the Capitol will not be returning to Congress. Half retired and the other half lost their primaries.
The most visible of the latter group is Rep. Liz Cheney, the Wyoming congresswoman who has made holding Trump accountable for January 6 and his effort to steal the election her white whale—which is why she lost her primary by 37 points. And that was just the final stage of her cancellation. In May 2021, she was ousted from the House GOP leadership. In November 2021, the Wyoming GOP’s Central Committee voted her out of the party. And then in February, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution describing the riot as “legitimate political discourse” and passed a resolution censuring her for taking part in the investigation of it.
For some fringe types, none of this is enough, which is why Cheney needs constant security.
The GOP is now more tolerant of intolerant cranks and bigots than it is of Republicans who dissent from the cult of Trump.
In the wake of Cheney’s defeat, Republican politicians and conservative pundits alike have expended an enormous amount of energy trying to rationalize, excuse, or otherwise justify the anathematization of Cheney. Yes, Trump’s behavior was abhorrent, the most reasonable ones concede, but by working with Democrats in pursuing Trump she betrayed the GOP in the eyes of Republican voters. The wiser course, they say, would have been to follow the path of more pragmatic Republicans like Sen. Mitch McConnell, who makes no secret of his distaste for Trump but refuses to do much about it.
The problem with this argument is that it overlooks the fact Cheney followed the McConnell strategy for years, voting with Trump 93 percent of the time and offering restrained criticism sparingly. Then on January 6, she took the same position as most conservatives and Republicans such as McConnell, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Lindsey Graham, who said hours after the attack: “All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.”
