When two parallel political dramas clashed Wednesday night in a House Republican conference room, the result was revealing for the party’s future after Donald Trump.
In fact, it’s almost as if he’s never gone.
At a closed-door marathon meeting, Republican lawmakers closed ranks around Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the conspiracy theorist who sympathizes with QAnon, while some spent hours dragging Rep. Liz Cheney ( R-WY), the third ranked. House Republican who voted to charge Trump for inciting the Capitol revolt on Jan. 6.
Cheney finally survived a challenge to his leadership position in a conference call Wednesday night, with a vote of 145 to 61, according to several reports. She will continue to be the president of a Republican Party conference that stretches down a very different path than she might wish. Meanwhile, Greene, who revealed himself last week for approving posts on social media calling for the assassination of President Nancy Pelosi, received a standing ovation from GOP lawmakers after making brief remarks defending himself during the meeting, according to Jake Sherman, of Punchbowl News.
House Republican Party leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is trying to keep this fragile family together as he recovers the majority in 2022. He praised and defended Cheney during the meeting, but according to two known sources, he spent more time mounting a defense of Greene, who faces a Democratic push to pull her out of her committee duties.
This was echoed in a statement McCarthy issued Wednesday afternoon, in which he “unequivocally” condemned Greene’s comments and said he was speaking to him. But he mostly blamed Democrats for distracting Congress with the push to remove Greene for a “partisan takeover” and gave no indication that he would discipline her in any way, let alone remove her from office on committees. of Budget and Education of the Chamber.
And while McCarthy defended Cheney’s vote to challenge Trump out of conscience, grassroots members denied it for exposing them to attacks through the way he announced his position. According to an ally of Cheney, ultimately, more Republican lawmakers spoke out in defense of the Wyoming Republican than against her. And the final vote to keep her at the helm reflected what had been the conventional wisdom of Republican Party circles for weeks: that most members, even if they disagreed with her vote, respected her and wanted to keep her as the leader.
That Greene came down without a slap on the wrist, but Cheney faced a vote on his fitness to serve as a leader by helping GOP aides who wanted the mark of conservatism that Cheney brings to the table, rather than the which, like Greene, suggests that Jewish-controlled satellite lasers start wildfires.
Prior to the meeting, GOP aides said Greene’s growing controversies had begun to overshadow the effort of a conservative agitator in the group to oust Cheney from the leadership. Democrats, outraged by Greene’s past conduct and demands, are increasingly pressuring party leaders to support dramatic actions to reprimand her. Many grassroots Democratic lawmakers have given their support to Greene’s departure not only from his committees, but also from Congress. A bill to oust the Republican from Georgia, introduced last week by Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA), has about 70 sponsors as of Wednesday.
And on Monday, a resolution by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) began to circulate to remove Greene from his duties on the House Labor and Education Committee and the House Budget Committee.
These measures took hold as McCarthy continued to promise a “conversation” with Greene, but avoided any compromise — or even any suggestion — about what he could do to discipline her.
Some aides to both parties complained that the Democrats ’move to force a vote on the word could leave McCarthy off the hook. But then they went on to use the resolution as a sword of damocles to hang over the Republican Party leader, with Democratic leaders saying that if they didn’t remove Greene from the committees, they would go ahead with a vote to do it themselves, which is scheduled for Thursday.
Prior to Wednesday, many Republicans thought the walk-in vote on Greene’s fate was the worst of cases. Democratic campaign officials are already committed to making Greene an anchor for the Republican Party in mid-2022 by linking it to all vulnerable lawmakers and a vote to register them defending it would make that task infinitely easier.
Pelosi telegraphed those attacks Wednesday afternoon just before the meeting began, and sent a press release with the issue “McCarthy (Q-CA) fails to lead, turnkey in Greene’s party.”
A GOP agent, who spoke anonymously with The Daily Beast to describe the dynamic frankly, said it was “completely idiotic” for McCarthy to submit his lecture to a possibly flat vote detrimental to Greene.
But by Wednesday afternoon, many Republicans had decided on two methods of attacking Democrats while avoiding any reckoning with Greene and his place in the party: deviating toward certain Democrats or denying the process.
Some Republican lawmakers began reactivating the push two years ago to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from their committees because of statements invoking anti-Semitic troops, though, above all, Omar left. apologize while Greene has only doubled defense.
Then, at a meeting of the House Rules Committee to consider the resolution to remove Greene from its committees, Republican lawmakers declared it a rush to try someone who had not even made incendiary statements during the charge.
“What do we do, Mr. President?” asked Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN), the top Republican in the House Rules Committee, who said Greene’s punishment by a democratic majority would set a detrimental precedent. “I’m not here to defend Rep. Greene,” he said. “I am here to defend the House process.”
Democrats had a direct retort. “If the precedent is that we remove people from committees that have called for assassination,” said rules committee chairman Jim McGovern (D-MA), “I’m fine with that.”
Cheney, meanwhile, had a much better stretch than Greene until Wednesday. With the focus on first-year Georgia Congresswoman after a series of reports revealing her extravagant past comments, the effort to oust her from the leadership — which according to instigators, allegedly had up to 100 sponsors -, it seemed to stop for the moment. “I don’t think there will be votes,” a House GOP aide said before the meeting, noting that Greene’s drama “eclipsed” Cheney.
Powerful Republicans also came to Cheney’s defense: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the leader of the Senate Republican Party, left little doubt as to where he fell in this intraparty war. On Monday, he issued statements praising Cheney as a “leader of deep convictions,” while claiming that Greene supported “false lies” and was a “cancer” party.
However, McConnell may fail to reflect his party’s base and the complicated politics many Republicans face as they try to maintain base support. Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), a longtime ally of Cheney who told The Daily Beast last year that he hoped to see her as the first woman to speak at the party, declined Wednesday to tell her if the would support in a vote, but offered to be “disappointed” in his statements.
“When I take a leadership position, I take on an additional responsibility to represent many other members who at the same time might feel different from what I do for an issue,” said Banks, a member of the Republican Party House Leadership. “I don’t throw them under the bus, nor do I use rhetoric or attack a co-worker.”
Senator Cynthia Lummis, a first-year Republican from Cheney’s home state of Wyoming who previously held the seat in the house now occupied by Cheney, declined to defend her. Capitol Hill reporters asked her three questions about Cheney’s fate, and she gave the same uncommitted answer each time: “The House should do what the House wants to do.”