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Liz Cheney vows to rid Republican Party of Trump

Jules Witcover, syndicated columnist

WASHINGTON — Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming swiftly responded to her ouster Wednesday as GOP conference chair by vowing she would do all in her now-limited power to see to it that Donald Trump “never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”

How the daughter of former Vice President Richard Cheney will achieve that aim depends on whether she can rally similarly minded Republicans to join her, now that she has been reduced to just another member of Congress.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy squashed her mini-revolt against the former president by barring a roll-call vote on removal from the party leadership. It would have forced members to disclose their position. Instead, it left her isolated in her effort to oblige others to publicly honor their oath to the Constitution, requiring a president to speak the truth to the American people.

Representative Cheney thus emulated earlier Republican Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, who in 1950 similarly called on her colleagues to honor their oath by castigating Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin for his wildly unfounded accusations of communist ties against his Democratic foes.

“If you want a leader who will enable and spread (Trump’s) destructive lies,” Cheney said, “I’m not your person; you have plenty of others to choose from. That will be their legacy.”

But the task to which Liz Cheney has set for herself will require much more than one fearless speech with which like-minded House Republicans may agree. Trump’s continued hold on millions of Republican voters, to whom he apparently will appeal at future rallies and fund-raising events, augurs many contentious months ahead of an attempted Trump comeback.

Many never-Trump wishful thinkers may console themselves in believing that the outraged but still narcissistic former president will eventually fade from the public eye. But as long as the likes of Kevin McCarthy or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pay courtesy calls to him at his Florida luxury retreat or kiss his regal ring, Trump will be a magnet for the media coverage on which he thrives.

For all the immediate attention Congresswoman Cheney has garnered, she is not likely to emerge as a political figure of sufficient stature within her party to lead it out of the current darkness that envelops it, with no other obvious savior right now. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, a man of integrity if not of magical appeal, was booed at a recent party function in his adopted state.

Accordingly, the Grand Old Party seems destined to endure more uncertainty, as Donald Trump strives against the odds to remain relevant, and Twitter now giving him a cold-shoulder and the Democrats largely ignoring him.

President Biden meanwhile focuses single-mindedly on his own aggressive agenda of coping with the public-health pandemic and accompanying economic lockdown. He provides a sharp contrast to Trump’s reign of incompetence and drift. In all, the outlook for his return to power seems little more than a vanishing pipedream.

Editor’s note: Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@comcast.net.

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