House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., listens to remarks Friday, May 8, 2020, in the State Dining Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
Even though Joe Biden has proclaimed a record number of policies during January, the biggest coup may belong to Republicans with their recent vote (it wasn’t even close) to keep Rep. Liz Cheney (WY) in her House leadership post.
As Kimberley Strassel points out in the WSJ, the GOP has a long way to go in unifying the Party after its November losses. “But this week it passed a first big test.”
This was a victory mostly in that it wasn’t much about Ms. Cheney at all. It was instead the party sending a message that it remains a big tent and isn’t going to grant or revoke membership purely on fealty to one politician, Donald Trump. Just as important, it was the party stomping on the new Democratic and media strategy to cast the entire GOP as extremists and kooks.
This came as a blow to Democrats, Lincoln Projectors and the media, who’ve been building a campaign strategy around the claim that the GOP is the embodiment of violence and nutballs. They’ve used the Capitol riot of Jan. 6 to launch impeachment and to argue that Mr. Trump is the leader of an entire party of insurrectionists.
This crowd was salivating at the prospect of the House conference exiling Ms. Cheney, the better to claim Trump thugs were purging disloyal party members.
As Peggy Noonan adds in the same pages as KS, Republicans cannot sit back and pretend that the new extremists on the Left will magically disappear. They won’t and their rhetoric will only get worse. Now is the time to face it down.
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