He stanched the bleeding. But he showed weakness. Jim Jordan is breathing down his neck. I won’t be surprised to see him out by the end of the year.
When two parallel political dramas collided in a House Republican conference room on Wednesday night, the result was a telling one for the future of the party after Donald Trump.
In fact, it’s almost like he never left.
In a marathon closed-door meeting, Republican lawmakers closed ranks around Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the QAnon-sympathizing conspiracy theorist, while some spent hours dragging Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the third-ranking House Republican who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.
Cheney ultimately survived a challenge to her position in leadership in a conference vote Wednesday night, on a vote of 145 to 61, according to multiple reports. She will remain chair of a GOP conference that is hurtling down a very different path than the one she might want. Meanwhile, Greene—who was revealed last week to have endorsed social media posts calling for the assassination of Speaker Nancy Pelosi—received a standing ovation from GOP lawmakers after she gave brief remarks defending herself during the meeting, according to Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman.
The House GOP leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), is trying to hold this fractious family together as he eyes reclaiming the majority in 2022. He praised and defended Cheney during the meeting, but according to two sources familiar, he spent more time mounting a defense of Greene, who is facing a Democratic-led push to remove her from her committee assignments.
That echoed a statement McCarthy released Wednesday afternoon, in which he “unequivocally” condemned Greene’s comments and said he gave her a talking-to. But he mostly blamed Democrats for “distracting” Congress with the push to remove Greene in a “partisan power grab,” and gave no indication he’d discipline her in any way, much less remove her from posts on the House Budget and Education Committees.
And while McCarthy defended Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump as a matter of conscience, rank-and-file members decried her for exposing them to attacks through the way she announced her position. Ultimately, more GOP lawmakers spoke up in defense of the Wyoming Republican than against her, according to a Cheney ally. And the final vote to keep her in leadership reflected what had been the conventional wisdom in GOP circles for weeks: that most members, even if they disagreed with her vote, respected her and wished to keep her as a leader.
That Greene got off without so much as a slap on the wrist but Cheney faced a vote on her fitness to serve as a leader rankled GOP aides longing for the brand of conservatism Cheney brings to the table—rather than the one that, like Greene, suggests that Jewish-controlled satellite lasers start wildfires.
Before the meeting, GOP aides were saying that Greene’s mounting controversies had begun to overshadow the effort from a group conservative agitators to oust Cheney from leadership.Democrats, incensed over Greene’s conduct and past claims, increasingly put pressure on their party leaders to back dramatic action to reprimand her. Many rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers have thrown their support behind booting Greene not only from her committees but from Congress altogether. A bill to expel the Georgia Republican from office, introduced last week by Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA), has nearly 70 cosponsors as of Wednesday.
And on Monday, a resolution from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) began circulating to remove Greene from her assignments on the House Education & Labor Committee and the House Budget Committee.
Those measures picked up support as McCarthy continued promising a “conversation” with Greene but avoided any commitment—or even any hints—on what he might do to discipline her.
Some aides in both parties grumbled that the Democrats’ move to force a floor vote might let McCarthy off the hook. But then they moved to use the resolution as a sword of damocles to hang over the GOP leader, with Democratic leaders saying that if he did not remove Greene from committees, they would move forward with a vote to do it themselves—which is slated for Thursday.
The Democrats are going to force them to take a vote on Greene and they can show off for Trump and the cult by voting for her publicly. But they voted for Cheney on a secret ballot making it possible to argue either side of this mess in 2022 depending on whichever comes out on top. Keep Trumpie happy for now but cover their bases in case he and Marge go even further off the rails and they have to bail.