Senate Republicans are expressing dismay, publicly and privately, over the House GOP’s vote to remove Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from leadership, which some GOP lawmakers see as a worrisome sign of former President Trump’s continued grip on the party.
It’s not lost on them that their own leader, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), has also dismissed Trump’s claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election as “repeated election lies” and they themselves are under pressure from Trump to find a new leader.
Many GOP senators, however, are keeping quiet about their concerns and would prefer to talk about other subjects, namely what they view as President Biden’s far-too-costly infrastructure agenda and plan to raise taxes on corporations.
It’s possible that if Cheney, who had eyed a run for Senate in 2013 and again in 2019, was a member of the Senate GOP leadership, she wouldn’t have been deposed.
Several members of the Senate GOP leadership as well as other prominent GOP senators expressed disappointment over Cheney’s fate on Wednesday, shortly after House Republicans fired her from the leadership ranks on a voice vote.
Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), who urged his Senate colleagues at the end of last year not to support objections to the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, said, “I hope that Republicans will continue to be the party that values free speech and doesn’t give in to group think.”
He praised Cheney as a “strong voice for conservative principles.”
“People ought to be able to speak their minds,” he said.
“To me, it’s about speaking the truth, and the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality,” he said.
Unlike their House counterparts, Senate GOP leaders led by McConnell have firmly rejected Trump’s baseless claims that Biden won the presidential election because of widespread fraud.
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Senate GOP dismayed by vote to boot Cheney https://t.co/BLKCsSCui2 pic.twitter.com/qNp5OIJBnf
— The Hill (@thehill) May 14, 2021
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