The vote to remove Liz Cheney from her leadership position has not taken place yet and the House’s top two Republicans–Andrew McCarthy and Stave Scalise–have already thrown their support behind New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik to replace her.
Here is CNN:
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy confirmed on Sunday that he backs Rep. Elise Stefanik for the role of House Republican conference chair, as Rep. Liz Cheney faces a vote to oust her from the influential GOP leadership post.
“Yes, I do,” McCarthy told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo when asked if he supports the New York Republican for the No. 3 role in the House Republican conference. Stefanik thanked McCarthy for his support in a tweet later Sunday.
CNN reported last week that McCarthy has been privately supporting Stefanik to replace Cheney, and the No. 2 member of House Republican leadership, Rep. Steve Scalise, publicly endorsed Stefanik’s bid for the job on Tuesday.
Stefanik has signaled to some of her colleagues that if she replaces Cheney, she plans to stay in leadership and as chair of the House GOP Conference only through 2022, wanting to pursue the top GOP job on the House Education and Labor Committee next Congress, according to a source with direct knowledge of the talks. The vote on the position could come as early as Wednesday.
Read the rest here.
Here are some facts:
- Liz Cheney believes that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election and thinks Donald Trump incited the January 6, 2021 insurrection on the United States capitol. She voted to impeach him.
- Elise Stefanik was not a Trump supporter in the early years of the Trump presidency. She criticized him during the 2016 campaign, condemned his travel ban on Muslims, questioned his plan to build a border wall, and thought it was a mistake to leave the Paris climate accord. Nevertheless, she won the president’s favor when she supported him during his first impeachment trial. (Trump is the only president in United States history to be impeached twice).
- Part of Elise Stefanik’s road to Trumpism included her decision to support the “Big Lie,” or the belief Donald Trump was the real winner of the 2020 presidential election. Stefanik did not vote to impeach him for inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
- Kevin McCarthy originally said that Trump incited the insurrection. As the insurrection raged around him on January 6, he called Trump from his office fearful for his life. But McCarthy quickly changed his tune after he went to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump. CNN reports that McCarthy is now worried about testifying under oath about his January 6 phone conversation with Trump.
- McCarthy is very conservative. Liz Cheney is more conservative than Elise Stefanick.
The only reason McCarthy backs Stefanick is that she is willing to lie about the 2020 election and Liz Cheney is not.
Kevin McCarthy once told court evangelical Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition that he was “proud to be a Christian.” He will now need to find a way to reconcile his Christian faith with his ambition to be Speaker of the House and his willingness to lead a party that finds its unity around a willingness to advance a lie.
What an embarrassment.
