Donald Trump looks to cement grip with new GOP star Elise Stefanik

Republican leaders are seeking to replace Trump critic Liz Cheney with Elise Stefanik as the party’s new female face.

Elise Stefanik aims to be the new female face of the Republican party. Picture; AFP.

A rising star of the Republican Party has emphasised her support for Donald Trump before she attempts to replace the former president’s chief critic in Congress on Wednesday (Thursday AEST).

Elise Stefanik, 36, aims to become the new female face of the party if, as expected, its members in the House of Representatives vote to remove Liz Cheney as their convener. Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York, tweeted yesterday that Republicans “overwhelmingly support President Trump & want us to advance the working class agenda he spearheaded!”

I am always asked by DC reporters and talking heads (not voters!) about who I believe is in charge of the Republican Party.

It's simple- GOP VOTERS are in charge! And GOP VOTERS overwhelmingly support President Trump & want us to advance the working class agenda he spearheaded!

— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) May 11, 2021

Despite voters’ rejection of Trump last year and the shock felt by many leading Republicans at the attack on the US Capitol, they have been regrouping around the man who led them to victory in 2016 and forged a more working-class voter base that continues to underpin his grip on the party.

Cheney, 54, who became the third most-senior House Republican unopposed in 2019, has been accused by senior colleagues of resisting the party’s pursuit of blue-collar voters; a mission that Stefanik, a privately educated Harvard graduate, has fully embraced.

Liz Cheney is a vocal critic of Donald Trump. Picture: Getty Images.

Cheney, the daughter of Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, survived a secret ballot to remove her in February by a two-to-one margin, but this time the most powerful figures in the House hierarchy are calling for her to be ousted in the name of party unity. Her defenders view the move as a sinister purge aimed at crushing Trump’s critics. “If we are to succeed in stopping the radical Democrat agenda from destroying our country, these internal conflicts need to be resolved so as to not detract from the efforts of our collective team,” Kevin McCarthy, 56, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, wrote in a letter to his party colleagues this week.

"She knows how to win, which is what we need!" - Donald Trump comments on Rep. Elise Stefanik: https://t.co/Xdm5otQ2cepic.twitter.com/jmUEDy98Gn

— Newsmax (@newsmax) May 11, 2021

A reassignment of seven seats after new census data may give Republicans a midterm boost regardless of Trump’s presence, but one that he can exploit. Texas, a party stronghold, will receive two more seats next year, and five states – Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, Montana and Oregon – will gain one each. New York, California, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will each lose one.

“I’d expect, just from reapportionment, the Republicans to win a few seats,” said Kyle Kondik, an election analyst at the University of Virginia. Some states have independent commissions to redraw boundaries but the process is fully under Republican control in Texas, Florida and North Carolina.

Despite the electoral failures of 2020 many in the Republican Party argue that it did not perform so terribly, given that it bore the brunt of a once-in-a-generation pandemic that shattered the economy. Republican voters continue to like most of Trump’s views, with YouGov, the pollster, suggesting that they strongly dislike the Black Lives Matter movement and strongly support the border wall with Mexico. “Trump’s ideas are extremely popular among Republicans. Whatever the future of the Republican Party, it is hard to imagine it will be fully excising itself of Trump any time soon,” YouGov concluded.

Local and state Republican parties remain dominated by pro-Trump officials. A poll in March for The Hill political website found that 81 per cent of Republican voters gave Trump favourable ratings and 88 per cent approved of the job he did as president.

The Times