Liz Cheney's Removal From GOP House Leadership Realigns Party With Donald Trump

House Republicans have ousted Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., from her position as GOP conference chair. The Wednesday vote comes after Cheney, who has long championed conservative policies, rebuked former President Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud and voted to impeach him after the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The Wyoming Republican Party broke from Cheney in February, voting overwhelmingly to censure her for voting to impeach Trump. She managed, however, to easily survive initial attempts to oust her.

She has since lost the support of House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, D-Calif., and many of her peers in the Republican conference. By Wednesday, her backers had diminished to the point that no roll call vote was necessary.

Cheney has remained unapologetic and privately warned colleagues she wouldn't be fading into the background.

“If you want leaders who will enable and spread his destructive lies, I’m not your person, you have plenty of others to choose from. That will be their legacy,” she said. “But I promise you this, after today, I will be leading the fight to restore our party and our nation to conservative principles, to defeating socialism, to defending our republic, to making the GOP worthy again of being the party of Lincoln.”

Cheney won’t be alone. A letter from over 100 "never-Trumpers" is expected to threaten the formation of a separate conservative party to oppose Trump and his loyalists.

Trump lambasted Cheney amid the party turmoil.

“Liz Cheney is a bitter, horrible human being. I watched her yesterday and realized how bad she is for the Republican party. She has no personality or anything good having to do with politics or our country,” he said in a statement.

The current frontrunner to take her seat is Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., a once-moderate politician now struggling to convince the alt-right she’ll be more loyal to Trump. For the time being, she lacks any opponent substantive enough to threaten her appointment.

“The lack of any challenger doesn’t remove any questions I have about her voting record and whether her positions are going to interfere with our ability to look to message for the conference,” said Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va.

Another wrinkle to Cheney’s ousting is that it comes at a time when polling indicates weakening support for Trump, even among his supporters.

A recent NBC News poll showed that for the first time since 2019, a majority of conservative voters identified as Republicans first and Trump supporters second, with President Biden’s deft handling of the pandemic and economic relief netting him strong overall numbers.