After openly criticizing former President Donald Trump, Congresswoman Liz Cheney lost her leadership position in the US Republican Party. Members of the House of Representatives voted for her departure. The move is the latest episode of Trump’s undercover war against influential political clans – the Bushes, Romney, Cheney, and Merkauski, who have ruled Republicans for years. Most likely, Cheney knew where she was going. Now she will lead the part of the Republicans who oppose Trump’s re-election as president.
The daughter of former US Vice President Dick Cheney is still considered the highest-ranking woman in the ranks of the Republicans – she served as chairman of a party conference in the House of Representatives. But on May 12, Republicans voted overwhelmingly in favor of her resignation. The Congresswoman will retain her membership in the party and will run for a new term in 2022, but now she is in the position of a kind of “opposition within the opposition.”
Resignation
Cheney, 54, resigned from her dislike of a former American leader who continues to dominate American conservatives. She was among ten members of Congress from the lower house of Congress who voted to impeach Trump after his supporters took over the Capitol. Even then, there were calls in the party to remove Cheney, but the Speaker of the Conservatives in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, defended her.
Nevertheless, Cheney continued to criticize Trump in the public field actively. The last straw for the Republicans was her recent column in the liberal newspaper The Washington Post. After that, McCarthy began negotiations on the resignation of the heretic congresswoman. Commenting on the move, Cheney said Republicans need to leave Trump behind and prevent him from damaging their reputation again.
“I will do everything in my power to ensure that the former president never gets close to the Oval Office again,” Cheney said, hinting at Trump’s desire to run for a second term in 2024.
Cheney’s resignation has attracted media attention largely because of the personality of the Congresswoman herself, the daughter of a heavyweight American politics, considered the architect of the war in Iraq. However, Trump’s conflict with influential Republican clans has been going on for a long time, and this is just one of his episodes.
Senator Mitt Romney, for example, was the only Republican in the upper house of Congress to vote for Trump’s first impeachment. He is the son of former Michigan governor and presidential candidate George Romney and, like other representatives of American political dynasties, was sidelined when Trump became head of state. Curiously, Romney’s niece Ronna McDaniel is the chairman of the Republican National Committee, but for this she had to break with family affairs and openly express support for Trump.
Bush
Another dynasty that has grumbled about Trump’s personality is the Bushes. Senator Jeb Bush was the billionaire’s rival in the Republican primaries, promising at first but quickly defeated by Trump’s charisma. Bush did not support Trump’s candidacy in the 2016 election, although former primary rivals usually do so to win their party’s candidate. The former presidents did not take this step either: George Bush Sr. and George W. Bush. The latter did not change his position four years later and did not vote for Trump in the 2020 elections.
Alaska Senator Lisa Merkauski also voted to impeach Trump in 2021. As you might guess, she is not a first-generation politician. Her father, Frank Merkauski, was governor of Alaska from 2002 to 2006 and a senator from the same state from 1981 to 2002.
Trump gave the “clan members” a choice – to declare their loyalty to him or to become marginalized within the party. Most of the Republicans have chosen the first path, but the political dynasties that have ruled party affairs for decades cannot calmly watch the ex-president trying to establish his own instead of their clans.
Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner have served as unpaid advisers to the president. The latter, in addition, oversaw the Middle East direction of foreign policy. In late 2020, it was reported that the wife of Trump’s second son, Lara, was considering running for governor of North Carolina. The alleged plans of Ivanka to compete for the post of head of Florida with her current governor Ron Desantis was also discussed.
In the person of Liz Cheney, the “old guard” of the Republicans decided to fight back against Trump finally. Taking such a risk, the Congresswoman made a bid for leadership in the ranks of the ex-president’s opponents. How successful her “campaign” will be shown by the 2022 midterm elections. If Cheney holds the position of Wyoming’s only representative in the lower house of Congress, she will have a chance to challenge Trump himself.
