Cheney, unbound, settles into the ‘bull’s-eye of controversy’
At her last conference meeting as a House Republican leader, Liz Cheney delivered the morning prayer for the first time. She chose a Bible verse with a pointed message: “The truth shall set you free.”
“I thought a lot about the prayer,” an oft-quoted line from the New Testament’s Book of John, Cheney told POLITICO. “Normally I yield to another member to do that, but I thought that was very important that day.”
Fifteen minutes after she prayed, Cheney’s colleagues voted to strip her of power for consistently rejecting Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, unleashing the Wyoming Republican on a long-shot mission to wrest her party from the grip of the ex-president.
After her high-profile ouster, Cheney now carries an even bigger megaphone and isn’t beholden to the shackles of leadership, whose members are expected to toe the party-line message in public. But what Cheney still lacks is the conservative cavalry she’ll need to chip at Trump’s influence on her party. Depending on whom you ask, Cheney either has a spine of steel or a streak of self-sabotaging stubbornness — and not all of her GOP admirers are ready to follow her lead. [Continue reading…]