In an interview with POLITICO, the deposed House GOP leader seemed to view her current place in the political wilderness as her destiny.
At her last conference meeting as a House Republican leader, Liz Cheney delivered the morning prayer for the first time. She chose a Bible verse with a pointed message: “The truth shall set you free.”
“I thought a lot about the prayer,” an oft-quoted line from the New Testament’s Book of John, Cheney told POLITICO. “Normally I yield to another member to do that, but I thought that was very important that day.”
Fifteen minutes after she prayed, Cheney’s colleagues voted to strip her of power for consistently rejecting Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, unleashing the Wyoming Republican on a long-shot mission to wrest her party from the grip of the ex-president.
After her high-profile ouster, Cheney now carries an even bigger megaphone and isn’t beholden to the shackles of leadership, whose members are expected to toe the party-line message in public. But what Cheney still lacks is the conservative cavalry she’ll need to chip at Trump’s influence on her party. Depending on whom you ask, Cheney either has a spine of steel or a streak of self-sabotaging stubbornness — and not all of her GOP admirers are ready to follow her lead.
As Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said at the meeting to boot Cheney: “If no one is following you, you are only taking a walk. You, Liz, are only taking a walk.”
Foxx’s remark was all the more stinging for its brutal assessment of Cheney’s political isolation: Other Republicans — even those who joined her in voting to impeach Trump — have been reluctant to replicate her outspokenness. The 54-year-old went from a Republican star viewed as a future speaker to a woman in exile who may struggle to hold on to her congressional seat, even as she keeps warning of the peril the former president poses.
”There’s usually three things that put you in the bull’s-eye of controversy. It’s your own ambition, somebody else’s ambition or things out of your control,” said Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), who described himself as a big fan of Cheney’s. When asked which one applies in her case, Davis responded: “All three.”
Despite the consequences, though, Cheney has no regrets. Not about voting to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. And not about passing last year on a bid for the Senate, where her views on Trump may have made her fewer enemies in her party — or, at least, where she wouldn’t face reelection for another six years.
In some ways, it feels as though Cheney views her current place in the political wilderness as her destiny. And she is certainly embracing her role as a self-cast Cassandra, determined to speak prophecies no matter who’s listening.
“I’m really glad that I decided to stay in the House,” Cheney said. “As we’re engaging in these battles about principles and the future and standing up for truth, I think that these battles really are being fought out in the House.”
“When you look at history, it’s individuals who make a difference,” she added. “And I feel really honored to be able to stand up and speak on these issues that I think are going to determine the future of the country and the future of our democracy.”
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During her post-ouster media blitz last week, she called into a New Hampshire radio station, further fueling speculation about her political ambitions.
Still, Cheney acknowledged the reality that an anti-Trump candidate would struggle to win in today’s GOP: “I’m very focused on changing that,” she said.
Even officially relegated to the sidelines, Cheney could still prove a constant thorn in House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s side. In a fresh sign of their rift, Cheney also told POLITICO she wouldn’t vote for McCarthy for speaker if they win back the House majority next year.
“I think that we’ve got to have leaders who lead based on principle, and that’s not what we’ve seen from him,” Cheney said.
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While she has a small army of public defenders as Trump maintains his iron grip on the party, it could take another bad election cycle or two for her to see her forces grow inside the ranks of elected Republicans. And Cheney is under no illusions about how much work she has ahead to rip her party away from Trump.
“It’s going to require consistent hard work and effort by a lot of people, and a willingness by people to stand up and talk about what’s right,” said Cheney. “I don’t think that it’s certainly going to happen overnight.”
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After her high-profile ouster, Liz Cheney now carries an even bigger megaphone and isn’t beholden to the shackles of leadership https://t.co/OmZnAhhUZc
— POLITICO (@politico) May 18, 2021
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