by Pedro Gonzalez
In what CNN’s Chris Cillizza accurately described as a “gut punch” to the GOP’s Trumpian faction, the House Republican Conference decided against removing Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) for her vote to impeach former President Donald Trump. Republicans voted 145-61 on a secret ballot in Cheney’s favor.
Cillizza zeroed in on Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, an ardent defender of the former president. “Make no mistake,” he wrote, “Gaetz, Trump, and the rest of that crowd wanted to make an example of Cheney. They, rightly, viewed her impeachment vote—and the ensuing controversy—as the first major battle for control of the post-Trump Republican Party.” He also notes that “Trump had released a poll last month purporting to show Cheney in trouble in Wyoming for her impeachment vote.” And according to The Dispatch’s Stephen Hayes, Trump was “calling R House members to encourage them to sack Cheney.”
Were he not so giddy about giggling at his political opponents, Cillizza wouldn’t have missed the most crucial part of this story. Who saved Cheney?
The answer is House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Trump’s new wingman.
In late January, McCarthy met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. That rendezvous went down just two weeks after McCarthy told his colleagues that Trump “bears responsibility” for the Capitol Building riot. True or not, that comment, one would think, should have put the California Republican out of Trump’s good graces. Apparently not.
“President Trump has agreed to work with Leader McCarthy on helping the Republican Party to become a majority in the House,” read a statement from Trump-aligned Save America PAC after the Mar-a-Lago meeting. “They worked very well together in the last election and picked up at least 15 seats when most predicted it would be the opposite. They will do so again, and the work has already started.”
Not a week later, McCarthy “offered a full-throated defense of Cheney and made the case for her to stay in leadership,” Politico reported. McCarthy held a “family discussion” with Republicans in defense of Cheney—“a critical boost for the Wyoming Republican.”
Trump’s lieutenant, handpicked by him to help remake the GOP, single-handedly facilitated a gut punch to the “Trump wing”—and by extension, millions of Republican voters.
Uniting around Cheney, McCarthy said in a statement, was necessary to stop “the radical Democrat agenda.” Only a “united conservative movement will strengthen the bonds of our citizens and uphold the freedoms our country was founded on.”
What might that look like in practice? The party will remain unified around “creating more jobs, lowering taxes, increasing take-home pay, defending America’s interests around the world,” Newt Gingrich wrote on the day Republicans voted to retain Cheney. In other words, more of the same old policy consensus against which Trump campaigned and won in 2016 before he embraced the same consensus along the way.
In the background of all this is the escalating assault on everyday Americans by many of the corporations and institutions that have benefited from GOP policymaking.
In Time magazine, Molly Ball last week wrote a story about an “informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans,” a “shadow campaign” designed to manage the 2020 election in the appropriate direction. Ball notes hundreds of “major business leaders, many of whom had backed Trump’s candidacy and supported his policies”—that is, the GOP’s pro-corporate policies—participated in this effort. Fox News host Tucker Carlson also revealed last week that Bank of America has been flagging its customers’ purchasing history, forwarding it to the federal government to determine if they were involved in the January 6 riot. Federal agents interrogated one customer subsequently cleared her of wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, NBC News reports the Pentagon has ordered a complete stand-down of the armed forces “to discuss the threat posed by white supremacy and similar extremism.” Do Gingrich and the GOP know, or care, that the institutions charged with “defending America’s interests around the world” think their constituents are the biggest threat to America?
There is a timeless analogy in Plato’s Republic, the ship of fools, that illustrates the problem of governance in a free political system. It also applies neatly to political parties.
“Though the shipowner surpasses everyone on board in height and strength, he is rather deaf and likewise somewhat shortsighted, and his knowledge of seamanship is pretty much on the same level.” The sailors vie for control of the ship, though none of them know how to steer it in the right direction. They curry favor with the shipowner through flattery and favors so that they, too, can help and aggrandize themselves. They praise grifters the most and unite only to protect their collective interests.
With or without Trump, the GOP remains a ship of fools, sailing idiotically against a dark horizon.
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Pedro Gonzalez is assistant editor of American Greatness and a Mount Vernon Fellow of the Center for American Greatness. Follow him on Twitter @emeriticus.
We knew this happened and now, they’re admitting it. The money is on the left. How can we possibly compete? How can we possibly claim our liberty again? The Constitution has been blown up and they are making strides at extricating US from our own country that most of us or our families fought for. Make no mistake. The ones who are being “impeached” on capitol hill are We the People. This is our country. We must not give up the ship.
Well stated. All of us who support a Democratic Republic not a mob ruled democracy must get involved. The Democrat Party has been stolen, bought out, whatever by the like of George Soros and the Social media tycoons. Only a full out grass root effort can be effective. And, yes, the establishment GOP members have sold us down the river for years. That is exactly why they rallied against Trump.
Which is why we have to fight back. Yes, I said fight back! Those RhINOs paired with the left to get Trump out of office. I don’t trust half of them as far as I can throw them. We need to create our own term limits!!!
McCarthy is Paul Ryan, with better hair. He, too, needs to go.
He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing!
The ship of fools also has the Republican “useful idiots,” those who steer left while they talk a straight conservative line.
lmao mitt romney
The Tennessee Republican party GOP, leadership is weak! What have they done to build a grassroots party in Davidson county? We will end looking like Atlanta, where we get two very liberal senators! Scott Golden has done nothing to build our party. He only sits back and says how great things are! Scott why haven’t you called out RINOs Senators Marsha Blackburn and Hagerty for not supporting Ted cruz election integrity act? I think it is time we start a third party the Patriot party to remove ours selfs from Little Bob Corker, Billy Haslam, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty. Scott Golden you should resign if you are not going to build our party in Davison county.
I used to say that, but forming a 3rd party is too costly and takes too much time.We need to take over the Republican party! We need to make our party officials responsible for their actions. I guarantee Wyoming won’t put another RhINO up for a candidate. We need BETTER candidates.We all need to be blowing up the phones and emails of Blackburn and Hagerty and your Congressman or woman! I contacted my Congressman and asked him how he voted on Liz Cheney. I have yet to hear from him. Yet I guarantee he will be contacting me for a donation. We need to do what the left has done. They took over the Democrat party, let’s take over the Republican party. Let us create our OWN term limits!
Perhaps the actual elected “Republican Party “leadership should be steering the party. A candidate who gets elected as a Republican as a result of a primary is not by extension the leader of the Republican Party. The public and politicians in office would do well to recognize that. The Actual Republican Party leadership in some measure are keenly aware of this fact. What we truly need is a better informed public.
Sadly, for years the elected republican party has led us down the road to liberalism. If the party over the years had been as interested in defending the constitution and Bill of Rights as they were filling their campaign chests by selling out to the highest bidder, we wouldn’t be having the problems we are now. How much cooperation did Trump get from the elected republican party? The voters gave him one mandate and big money gave the elected party another mandate, who won out, hint, it wasn’t the voters?