Liz Cheney pledges to block Donald Trump from Oval Office

The Wyoming representative says she will continue to fight against the embrace of a one-term leader who keeps spreading ‘lies’.

‘We cannot embrace the big lie’: Liz Cheney in Washington on Thursday. Picture: AFP

Republicans have ousted conservative Liz Cheney, a fierce critic of Donald Trump, from her powerful leadership role in the US House of Representative — a move that tightens the former president’s grip on the party.

Eighteen months before midterm elections and three years before the next presidential race, the Republican Party punished one of its own for her refusal to embrace Mr Trump’s false claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election.

The daughter of former vice- president Dick Cheney remains a member of congress. But a swift, closed-door voice vote late on Wednesday night to remove her as the number three house Republican offered her up as the latest political sacrifice in the GOP’s alignment with Mr Trump.

The Wyoming representative said afterwards she would continue fighting for conservative principles and against the embrace of a one-term leader who keeps spreading voter fraud falsehoods.

“We cannot be dragged backwards by the very dangerous lies of the former president,” Ms Cheney said. “We must go forward based on truth. We cannot both embrace the big lie and embrace the constitution.”

The 54-year-old also stood firm against the prospect of Mr Trump running again in 2024.

“I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office,” she said.

Mr Trump punched back in a personal attack. “Liz Cheney is a bitter, horrible human being,” he said after her ouster.

“She has no personality or anything good having to do with politics or our Country.”

With Republican divisions front and centre, President Joe Biden courted bipartisanship by hosting his first White House meeting with the four congressional leaders. Democrat house speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, top house Republican Kevin McCarthy and top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell joined Mr Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris for nearly two hours in the Oval Office.

Despite the Republican turmoil, Mr Biden signalled he could still work with McCarthy and negotiate over the White House’s massive new infrastructure proposal. “I came away encouraged,” the president said. “I’m encouraged that there’s room to have a compromise on a bipartisan bill that’s solid and significant.”

Having overseen the purge of a fellow leader, Mr McCarthy emerged from the White House desperate to tamp down the narrative that his party is spreading election fraud falsehoods.

“I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election,” he said, ignoring Mr Trump and the many Republican congress members who regularly raise concerns about the vote’s integrity.

“I think that is all over with,” McCarthy said. “We’re sitting here with the president today.”

But the party remained absorbed by the Cheney-Trump schism. Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congressional disrupter who wore a “Trump Won” mask on the house floor when she was sworn in January, has long wanted to see Ms Cheney relieved of her leadership duties for not supporting the ex-president.

“It was my second vote to remove her,” Ms Greene said, referring to an earlier secret-ballot vote that Ms Cheney survived in February after the then chair of the house Republican conference voted to impeach Mr Trump for inciting the deadly US Capitol insurrection on January 6.

“I’m just glad the GOP conference caught up.”

Mr Trump, McCarthy and number two Steve Scalise have all endorsed a young moderate-turned-Trumpist, Elise Stefanik, as Ms Cheney’s replacement.

Ms Stefanik, who opposed certification of results in some swing states that voted for Mr Biden, has no serious competition for the post yet. But a vote for a new conference chair is not nailed down, as some Republicans worry that Ms Stefanik, while a Trump defender, is insufficiently conservative.

Ms McCarthy and other Republican leaders argue the squabble is about unity ahead of the midterm elections in 2022, and that Ms Cheney’s public Trump bashing has done nothing to bring a fractured party together following an election that left them sidelined from power.

House Republican Adam Kinzinger who, like Ms Cheney, voted to impeach Trump for inciting the Capitol insurrection, scoffed at the notion that unity — and not bowing to Trump’s voter base — was the justification for Ms Cheney’s forced martyrdom.

“Truth cannot coexist with lies,” Mr Kinzinger said. “You cannot unify with that.”

Even some one-time supporters of Ms Cheney had grown frustrated with her relentless opposition to Trumpism.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham in February hailed Ms Cheney as a principled conservative voice in the GOP. But on Thursday AEST he offered a new reality: “She has taken a position regarding former president Trump which is out of the mainstream of the Republican Party.”

AFP