I was on Majority Report this morning and we talked about the impending impeachment trial and McConnell’s maneuvers. I think they are still in flux about what to do about Trump without offending his followers. They are almost certainly watching his development with great interest:
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) is staring down just over a majority of House Republicans who support toppling the No. 3 House Republican from leadership after she voted to impeach now-former President Trump for inciting a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol earlier this month.
According to reporting from Politico, at least 107 House Republicans have communicated to the leaders of that effort that they would support removing Cheney from leadership on a secret ballot, while others have threatened boycotting future conference meetings if she remains in power.
The intensifying campaign against Cheney, who called her decision to impeach Trump a “vote of conscience,” signals that Trump’s ideological stronghold on the party continues to echo in the chamber since his departure from office on Wednesday.
Multiple GOP sources involved in the effort told the publication that after voting to impeach Trump last week, the highest-ranking woman in the House GOP put herself in hot water — risking not only her leadership but also facing a primary challenge from state Sen. Anthony Bouchard, and angering some of her Wyoming constituents. A local county Republican Party in Wyoming unanimously agreed to censure Cheney last weekend over her impeachment vote. The Wyoming GOP had previously put out a statement that essentially combed the party’s inbox and relayed angry messages aimed at Cheney after her support for impeaching Trump.
The news of a growing revolt against Cheney comes after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) said they would continue to support Cheney as chair, even as loyalists to former President Trump in the lower chamber called for her removal as conference chair.
According to Politico, at least a dozen House Republicans expressed further frustrations with Cheney, who is in charge of the party’s messaging efforts, for providing fodder to Democrats a day before the impeachment trial, giving them ample time to use her statements, while also sheltering the few Republicans who stood behind her in voting to impeach the now former president.
Cheney, for her part, seems to be brushing off the brouhaha.
Cheney has made a bet that the Trump cult will dissolve before 2022 and she will be fine. Ben Sasse has done the same in the Senate. Both have presidential aspirations. But it hasn’t happened yet. These GOPers are looking at the polls and see that around 75% of Republicans still worship Dear Leader.
But, there is a countervailing force in the Republican Party:
As the House prepares to send articles of impeachment to the Senate on Monday, CNN has learned that dozens of influential Republicans around Washington — including former top Trump administration officials — have been quietly lobbying GOP members of Congress to impeach and convict Donald Trump. The effort is not coordinated but reflects a wider battle inside the GOP between those loyal to Trump and those who want to sever ties and ensure he can never run for President again.
The lobbying started in the House after the January 6 attack on the Capitol and in the days leading up to impeachment. But it’s now more focused on Sen. Mitch McConnell, the powerful minority leader who has signaled he may support convicting Trump.”Mitch said to me he wants Trump gone,” one Republican member of Congress told CNN. “It is in his political interest to have him gone. It is in the GOP interest to have him gone. The question is, do we get there?”
McConnell had proposed delaying the trial until February, but with the articles coming to the Senate on Monday, the process will likely be set in motion sooner. It would take 17 Republicans to join all 50 Democrats in order to convict. While the bar is high, some GOP sources think there is more of an appetite to punish the former President than is publicly apparent.”There were 10 House Republicans who voted for impeachment. There were probably over 150 who supported it,” said Charlie Dent, a former Republican congressman and CNN contributor.
The ongoing Republican whisper campaign, according to more than a dozen sources who spoke to CNN, is based on a shared belief that a successful conviction is critical for the future of the Republican party. Multiple sources describe this moment as a reckoning for the party. “Trump created a cult of personality that is hard to dismantle,” said a former senior Republican official. “Conviction could do that.”
The lobbying effort has included behind-the-scenes pressure by Republican donors, calls from former top Trump White House officials, and a set of talking points circulating among Republicans arguing for Trump’s impeachment.
The 9-point memo charges that “it is difficult to find a more anti-conservative outburst by a U.S. president than Donald Trump the last two months.” Other points include that Trump “urged supporters from across the nation to come to Washington, DC, to disrupt” Congress on January 6 and egged on the crowd, which was “widely understood to include people who were planning to fight physically, and who were prepared to die in response to his false claims of a ‘stolen election.’
‘The memo goes on to point out Trump “tweeted and made other statements against the Vice President as the Secret Service was being forced to rush Mike Pence out of the Senate chamber and into a protective bunker.” It’s unclear how widely disseminated the memo is among Republicans in Washington.
It would appear that Republicans are in dissaray. Imagine that.
McConnell cares about one thing right now: maintaining his power whether in the majority or in the minority. He is looking at his caucus and seeing that he lost seats in almost all the purple states this last time and 2022 looks daunting. As Seder astutely pointed out this morning, his best bet may be to let Schumer nuke the filibuster so he can let his Senators go their own way and make the Democratic “centrists” have to take the tough votes. In any case, he’s having to dance as fast as he can to keep the crazy Trumpers happy while recognizing that a good part of the party has had it. It’s a tough position. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.