Liz Cheney ousted from House GOP leadership in sign of Trump’s enduring grip on party

House Republicans removed Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney from their leadership ranks on Wednesday in retaliation for her refusal to fall in line with Donald Trump’s unfounded claims about the 2020 election, pleasing the former president and signaling that the party values loyalty to him above all.

Convening behind closed doors, the Republicans needed less than 20 minutes to strip Cheney of her credentials as GOP Conference Chair by voice vote. No roll call was made as support for Cheney’s ouster from the No. 3 House GOP post appeared nearly unanimous, a source told the Daily News.

Before the vote, Cheney affirmed in a speech to her colleagues that the 2020 election was not stolen and blamed the deadly Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack squarely on the former president’s false insistence that it was.

“If you want leaders who will enable and spread his destructive lies, I’m not your person,” Cheney told her fellow Republicans, according to leaked excerpts of her remarks. “You have plenty of others to choose from. That will be their legacy.”

Cheney’s likely successor, upstate New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, is indeed among the dozens of congressional Republicans who have amplified Trump’s baseless claim that President Joe Biden’s election was the product of Democratic cheating and fraud.

Asked by reporters after Cheney’s ouster if she still believes Trump’s unfounded assertions, Stefanik stuck to her guns.

“I stand by my statement on the House floor in January,” she said, referring to remarks in which she claimed without evidence that 140,000 ballots were cast illegally in a predominantly Democratic Georgia county in the 2020 election.

Republicans are expected to vote on Stefanik’s bid to become the next No. 3 on Friday, and she has the support of Trump, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise and other GOP brass, making her confirmation effectively certain.

Trump’s consolidation of the party is a reflection of the belief among elected Republicans that his popularity with GOP voters remains so widespread that they need him to win future elections. His control over congressional Republicans has seemingly only grown stronger since he left office after being impeached for inciting the Jan. 6 riot.

Cheney and a small contingent of like-minded Republicans have argued that acquiescing to Trump could deal long-lasting damage to American democracy, especially as he continues to regularly spout lies about the election he lost.

But McCarthy, the top House Republican who green-lighted Cheney’s ouster, claimed that the Wyoming congresswoman wasn’t removed because of her pushback against Trump’s election falsehoods.

“I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. That’s all over with,” McCarthy told reporters at the White House later in the day after meeting with Biden and other congressional leaders. “We are sitting here with the president today. So from that point of view I don’t think that’s a problem.”

Trump, who just days ago released a statement calling his election defeat “Fraudulent,” wasted no time dancing on Cheney’s leadership grave.

“Cheney is a bitter, horrible human being,” Trump said in an emailed statement. “She has no personality or anything good having to do with politics or our Country.”

The select few House Republicans who have joined Cheney in condemning Trump’s election claims bemoaned her removal from leadership.

“This is a sad day,” said Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a frequent Trump critic.

But Cheney, who used to be considered royalty in the Republican Party as the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, said her work is far from done.

“I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office,” she told reporters immediately after her colleagues voted to oust her.

Though Stefanik appears to be on a glide-path to replace Cheney, some hardcore conservative Republicans have noticed that the upstate New York congresswoman actually has a rather moderate voting record, including opposition to Trump’s signature 2017 tax cuts.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican with ties to the QAnon conspiracy theory, said she has asked McCarthy to delay Friday’s expected vote so that other candidates can jump in.

“We, you know, need to have choices,” Greene said. “I think it’s good to have choices.”

____