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‘Warmongering Fool’ vs ‘Cheeto Jesus’: What’s Behind Republicans’ Push to Purge Liz Cheney?

Liz Cheney, the Wyoming congresswoman and daughter of once powerful GOP grandee and Iraq War architect Dick Cheney, is again facing expulsion from the leadership of her own party over her stance on Donald Trump – a representative of the more assertively anti-globalist, less aggressively interventionist wing of the Republican Party.

Senior GOP leaders are plotting a new push to purge Liz Cheney, one of the most vocal leaders of the “Never-Trump Republicans”-turned-darling of Democrats and liberal mainstream media, over her latest effort to purge the party of Trumpists.

At the time, senior members of the GOP’s neoconservative old guard, from former President George W. Bush to former Bush and Trump White House official John “Never Saw a War He Didn’t Like” Bolton, came out in Cheney’s defence, with Bolton suggesting that the Republicans managed to avoid a “disaster” by voting to keep Cheney in her post. Cheney survived removal by a 145-61 vote (a 2/3 vote was required to replace her), only to be censured by Republicans in her own home state of Wyoming days later in a 74-8 leadership vote.

Police release tear gas into a crowd of pro-Trump protesters during clashes at a rally to contest the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results by the U.S. Congress, at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, U.S, January 6, 2021.

‘Warmongering Fool’ vs ‘Cheeto Jesus’

Cheney dismissed the censure motion and continued her crusade against the New York real-estate mogul, who walloped all of his more traditional Republican opponents in 2016, including the Bush dynasty’s Jeb (!) Bush, before winning the presidency and setting the GOP on a new paleoconservative course ostensibly aimed at bringing manufacturing jobs back to America and reducing foreign entanglements.

Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump, center, speaks as candidates, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., left, and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, right, listen, during the Republican presidential debate sponsored by CNN, Salem Media Group and the Washington Times at the University of Miami, Thursday, March 10, 2016, in Coral Gables, Fla.

Throughout her years in politics, Cheney has marketed herself as a proponent of traditional Republican policies from the pre-Trump era, including support for military adventurism abroad and the Bush-era foreign policy of pre-emptive invasions of other countries.

U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) stands behind Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) as he addresses reporters following a weekly House Republican caucus meeeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. April 20, 2021.

In comments caught by a hot mic, McCarthy revealed that he had “had it” with Cheney and had “lost confidence” in her ability to lead, and suggested that she’s “got real problems”.

In this May 3, 2014 file photo, Meghan McCain, and Sen. John McCain attend the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington

On Thursday, in a final shot across the bow ahead of next Wednesday’s vote, Liz Cheney published an op-ed in The Washington Post in which she warned that the GOP was “at a turning point” and that “history is watching us” amid Trump’s continuing influence on the party.

In the op-ed, the congresswoman accused Trump of fomenting violence by refusing to recognize Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, and of “seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work – confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law”. Cheney went on to tout herself as a “conservative Republican”, a fighter against “the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump cult of personality”, and urged her fellow party members not to join “Trump’s crusade to delegitimize and undo” the 2020 election.

Aware of the former president’s continued popularity among the Republican base, Cheney suggested that “while embracing or ignoring Trump’s statements might seem attractive to some for fundraising and political purposes, that approach will do profound long-term damage to our party and our country”. She added that she would continue to “defend the basic principles that underpin and protect our freedom and our democratic process”, “no matter what the short-term political consequences might be”.

In addition to the new breed of Republican leaders Trump brought into the party in the 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections, Republican leaders’ continued fealty to Trump in the wake of 2020 and resistance to returning to a pre-Trump era is largely explicable by opinion polling.