On Friday, Republicans in the House of Representatives promoted Rep. Elise Stefanik to a leadership position, a move that demonstrated how the party, whose guiding light has traditionally been conservative values, now considers loyalty to Donald Trump as the vital key to electoral success.
A staunch Trump supporter from upstate New York, Stefanik, was just chosen to the No. 3 leadership position, which had previously been held by Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney.
Cheney was removed from his position as vice president by Republican leaders because he repeatedly criticised former president Trump for his role in inciting the violent uprising at the Capitol on January 6 and for persistently pushing Trump’s false claims that voting fraud caused his reelection defeat in November.
There is No Proof Trump was Cheated Out of a Win, According to Local Authorities and judges From Both Parties Around the Country.
In a secret ballot that gave GOP lawmakers a clear option about where to steer the party, Stefanik handily defeated Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, 134 to 46. While Trump and other party officials, including some conservatives, are staunch supporters of Stefanik, who has a moderate voting record, Roy is a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus and was vigorously opposed by the previous president.
It is unusual for a defeated former president to retain significant weight inside the GOP, as Stefanik pointed out in her post-election press conference. Republican voters have shown overwhelming support for Trump in polls, giving party leaders no reason to shun him.
Stefanik, 36, argued that voters, not party elites, select who leads the Republican Party. To which she continued, “He is an important voice in the Republican Party, and we look forward to working with him.”
Stefanik receives a 35-point career average from the conservative Club for Growth, which supports Roy. That’s much down from Cheney’s 65 and Roy’s 100, and it’s even lower than Minnesota’s Rep. Ilhan Omar, a member of the “squad” of young radical House Democrats, who only got a 38.
In 2022, Republicans intend to regain control of the House of Representatives, so they are hoping that by nominating Stefanik, the focus will be taken off of the contentious purging of the defiant Cheney. Stefanik’s promotion provides the GOP with a new spokesman who is also one of the party’s relatively few women in Congress. She is a Trump loyalist who has stood by some of Trump’s baseless allegations about widespread election cheating.
She Emphasised that the Crew was “United” And “Operating as One.”
Nonetheless, GOP divisions are not going away anytime soon. And emotions remain fresh after Cheney’s acrimonious resignation, which Roy’s campaign warned would lead to a fight for dominance among hard-right conservatives.
According to three sources with knowledge of last Friday’s GOP gathering, Cheney was not present. When asked about her whereabouts, no word came back from her office.
Last Words
She plans to remain a member of Congress and leverage her position as a prominent member of the Republican establishment and the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney to try to dislodge her party from Trump and to oppose his potential run for the White House in 2024.
On Thursday’s “Special Report” on Fox News, she said, “We have to get people to vote for us, and we can’t that if we are a party that is based on a foundation of lies.”
