Liz Cheney is right: Time to dump Trump loyalty oath
Reagan's 11th Commandment is Dead
The Conservative Action Project, a group that includes a number of leaders of conservative groups like ACU’s Matt Schlapp and Tea Party leader Jenny Beth Martin, sent a letter to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that asked him to remove Reps. Liz Cheney, R-WY, and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill, from the House Republican conference “due to their egregious actions as part of the House of Representative’s January 6th Select Committee.” From the letter:
As you are aware, this committee has no formal representation from Republicans. Both Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger serve at the request of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). As part of Pelosi’s team, Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger have deliberately sought to undermine the privacy and due process of their fellow Republicans, and those of private citizens, with improperly issued subpoenas and other investigatory tactics
I get that these days that’s what partisans do — demand purity and go after their own kind — to gin up the base and raise money for their organizations.
Sure, it feels good, but what good does it do?
Do these people care about winning or winning points?
President Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Any Fellow Republican,” is dead. And really, this is 2021. (The issue isn’t House Rs talking trash about Cheney and Kinzinger. It’s their move to get them booted from the conference.)
In 2021, there is no downside for hyper-Trump House Republicans to trash people like Cheney and Kinzinger. (Amid redistricting, Kinzinger decided not to run for re-election.) Most Trump-Or-Else Republicans hail from far-right districts that will reward their actions.
Say this for Cheney and Kinzinger, who both voted to impeach Trump: they knew the likely consequences of their actions. They put their consciences ahead of their re-election prospects because they believe in something and are willing to put their careers on the line to do what they think is right.
According to a Politico Playbook report, House Democrats are in a similar corner as DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney reportedly is pushing progressive politics in swing districts. Said one unnamed House Democrat:
“This is crazy to me that the DCCC is rolling out a playbook that they know doesn’t work and that they encouraged people in 2018 not to use,” said the member who dropped the f-bomb to describe the situation.
I have to believe that when the blister pops, as former President Barack Obama used to say, partisans on both sides of the aisle will realize that they have been hurting themselves as they try to turn government into an all-or-nothing roll of the dice.
But that will take a while for the right as the GOP no doubt will clean up in 2022.
Debra J. Saunders is a fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership. Contact her at dsaunders@discovery.org.
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I prefer former governors as president. It's time, with her knowledge of foreign countries and their leaders, for Nikki Haley to step up.
I voted for Trump twice, but not in the 2016 primary. Trump won because he had ideas. For that reason, I hope to see him in the primary again. Perhaps he'll smoke out some ideas from other candidates-- of all parties. But I don't want him as president again, even though I thought he was good for the country. We don't need the circus of negativity directed at him from outside again.