This GOP vs Liz Cheney battle isn’t what you think it is

| 9:09 am EDT May 6, 2021
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The battle between Liz Cheney and the rest of the Republican House is certainly juicy and good for generating headlines. But truth be told, I’m not sure the stakes are particularly high for anyone on any side, at least when it comes to the question of whether Cheney gets to keep her job. Let me explain.

Liz Cheney is clearly laying the groundwork for a presidential run in 2024. It’s far too early to predict whether she’ll get anywhere with this, because it’ll depend largely on whether the Republican voting base has finally moved beyond an imprisoned Donald Trump by that time. But it’s clear that Cheney is looking to become President of the United States, and that her decision to call out her own party leadership is part of that strategy.

In that sense, Liz Cheney’s current title – the third highest ranking member of the minority party in the House – is like a participation trophy for her. She clearly doesn’t care whether she loses this title or not. She’ll still be a member of the House, she’s still on track to get reelected to her seat in 2022, and she can still run for President in 2024 whether she has a position within the Republican House leadership or not.

Nor are the stakes particularly high for the Republican Party. If they oust Liz Cheney from her relatively low position in the House Republican leadership, so what? Despite the histrionic predictions coming from the doomsday pundits, firing Cheney isn’t going to cause the Republican Party to gain magical fascist powers. It isn’t going to cause America to plunge into a dictatorship. It’s difficult to argue that it’ll substantively change anything.

And of course, Donald Trump is 100% finished, regardless of whether Liz Cheney loses her low level title or not. Trump, with his 32% and dropping favorability rating, isn’t magically going to turn into a viable 2024 candidate just because Cheney loses her title. Trump will be in prison by 2024, and even if he weren’t, he would still be too laughably unpopular to get anywhere.

So it’s difficult to point to any real stakes, anywhere, hinging on whether Liz Cheney loses her participation trophy title. Cheney and the Republican leadership will continue to trade barbs whether she loses her title or not, and that should help the Democrats a bit, because it’s always good for one side when the other side is fighting internally in public. But beyond that, the media coverage of this spat feels like a whole lot of ratings-friendly noise signifying nothing.