Liz Cheney's Relationship With The Republican Party Takes Another Dramatic Turn

For Republican Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, 2021 has been a year of personal principles and ugly revelations. As one of the very few members of the GOP who has consistently criticized ex-President Donald Trump since his loss in the November 2020 election — the same time he started sputtering unsubstantiated and debunked claims of election fraud — Cheney experienced a swift downgrade from de facto Republican royalty (as a daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney) to Republican pariah. In a sea of Trump loyalists and appeasers, Cheney has stood out as a detractor: first for her unwillingness to cater to Trump's election narratives, and later as one of the few GOP House lawmakers who voted for impeachment at his second Congressional trial.

For this, Cheney — who as of this report is currently serving as the vice-chair of the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol Hill Insurrection — has gone through the wringer, to say the least. Shortly after news of Cheney's vote to impeach went live, Republicans rallied for her to be censured and ousted from the party. (In Wyoming, the censure went through.) Now, a year after Cheney's break from her party's MAGA-diehards entered into the national discourse, it seems Republicans in the very state she represents have taken drastic measures to give her the boot — and it's far from pretty.

As the Associated Press first reported on November 15, members of Wyoming's Republican central committee voted in favor of refusing to consider or acknowledge Liz Cheney, an elected GOP official, as a member of their party. Per AP, the impetus for the vote (and the resulting decision) rested on Cheney's vote for impeaching Donald Trump earlier this year, along with her noted criticism of Trump's continued allegations of election fraud in November 2020, all of which have been repeatedly quashed by experts, federal courts, and more. 

As Insider reported shortly following the news of the Wyoming GOP vote, the lawmaker was previously warned by Republicans against speaking out against Trump as early as January, following the right-wing insurrection at the Capitol. Cheney, who later voted to impeach Trump during his second trial as one of 10 other House Republicans, purportedly refused to fall in line with her fellow party members, according to an upcoming book by ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl. 

In one text Cheney sent to then-Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, per Karl's book, the Wyoming politician implied she would not waiver in her criticism of Trump: "Historian David McCullough has described the statue of Clio, the Muse of History, standing over the North door and Statuary Hall. She takes notes in her book, reminding all of us that our words will be measured by history," her text to McConnell read.