For more than two decades the Cheney and Bush families and Karl Rove have run the Republican Party by controlling fundraising. In 2016, Jeb Bush raised and spent more than $130 million from this powerful network of donors, at a cost of $46 million per delegate whom he won.
At the same time, Karl Rove was predicting that if Donald Trump became the Republican nominee then Democrats would win the White House and the Senate. The opposite happened as Trump became president and his coattails lifted to victory many Republican senatorial candidates, such as Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania.
Yet the Bush-Cheney-Rove triumvirate has never accepted their defeat, and never acknowledged what Trump has achieved. The point person in Congress for the Never-Trumpers became Liz Cheney, who won the congressional seat in Wyoming despite not living there, based on her famous father’s name.
For several years Liz Cheney has worked hard at trying to purge conservatives from influence, and even seeking to defeat them in their own primaries. She backed a primary opponent to conservative Rep. Tom Massie (R-KY), whom Massie then defeated by 81-19%.
On January 3rd, Liz Cheney circulated a 21-page memo criticizing challenges to the election procedures whereby millions of inadequately verified mail-in ballots were counted for Biden. Cheney did nothing for election integrity, while interfering with those attempting to stop election fraud.
Recently it was disclosed that Liz Cheney was the person who secretly arranged for an anti-Trump letter to be signed by 10 former Defense Secretaries, many of whom hold their own personal grudges against Trump. In mid-January Cheney led nine other House Republicans to vote for the second impeachment of Donald Trump a few days before he left office.
On Wednesday House Republicans are scheduled to oust Liz Cheney from her undeserved rank of #3 over House Republicans. “She’s failed in her mission as the chief spokesperson of our party,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) said on Sunday, as Chairman of the 153-member Republican Study Committee, the largest Republican caucus in the House.
Despite widespread criticism by Republicans of Liz Cheney, she has continued to speak virulently against Trump. He received nearly 20% more votes than Liz Cheney’s father or any Bush ever did, and it is difficult to see why anyone would think there is a successful political future in the globalist policies of Cheney and Bush, rather than the America First policies of the immensely popular Trump.
Even some liberals have shown more concern than Cheney about the mistreatment of Trump supporters in D.C. jails, where they languish awaiting trials over their exercise of First Amendment rights on January 6. To Cheney, perhaps no punishment of a Trump supporter can be harsh enough.
Cheney lasted this long because Karl Rove supports those who support her, such as Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) who benefited from a fundraising event headlined by Rove. Though Kinzinger is in northern Illinois and Rove is from Texas, the shadow network of donors whom Rove controls lined up to support the Never-Trumper.
Apparently Liz Cheney thought she was invincible with high-roller donors backing her up, who can be told to support other Republicans who support her. On the strength of that and a secret ballot, Cheney survived a vote to remove her from authority in February.
But principles are more important in the GOP than money is. Before mouthing off further against Trump and the more than 74 million voters who support him, Liz Cheney should have read a copy of “A Choice Not an Echo” by Phyllis Schlafly.
In it Phyllis explained that grassroots Republicans can and will make a difference, as in 1964 when they toppled the powerful Nelson Rockefeller with a candidate from the then-small western state of Arizona, Barry Goldwater.
Goldwater lacked the nearly infinite wealth of the Rockefellers, just as House conservatives lack access to the Bush-Cheney-Rove gravy train. Liz Cheney is an heiress to the fortune acquired by her father Dick Cheney from the globalist Halliburton Corporation, between his stints as congressman, Secretary of Defense, and Vice President.
Liz Cheney sometimes sides with liberals on globalism, immigration, and porous election procedures, while Trump and the grassroots are solidly on the conservative side of these fundamental issues and more. After Liz Cheney unsuccessfully attempted to purge conservatives from the House, it is refreshing to see Cheney receive an overdue comeuppance.
She can’t be the “Wicked Witch of the West” because she doesn’t really reside out West, despite occupying Wyoming’s seat in Congress. Let’s hope that this humiliation of Liz Cheney’s inflated self-importance causes her to resign her seat entirely.
This is not only a triumph of good over the Trump-hating Liz Cheney. This is an historic victory for the grassroots, a realization of the American dream to have a political choice, not merely an echo.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.
