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As a result, they seem to have learned less about what it takes to develop and maintain professional friendships and alliances. David Petraeus, who survived a public scandal mostly intact, of the latter.Ĭuomo and Cheney don’t have much else in common, but both are second-generation politicos whose rise in public life was propelled in large part by their father’s networks. At the time, I wrote Harris telling him that Cheney was another example of the former, and the retired Gen. He contrasted the friendless and scandal-plagued New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, with the late presidential adviser Vernon Jordan, a man of a thousand close friends. POLITICO’s John Harris made the point in a column in March that asked, pointedly, why some politicians are such a-holes.
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It is not a message that resonates particularly well with a group that struggled with how to approach the Trump era altogether, and is eager to put the divisions of the past four years behind them.Ĭheney might have understood her colleagues’ thinking better if she spent some more time hearing them out. Yet, in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 attack, Cheney told donors she wanted to make her forthcoming primary battle a referendum on the attacks, according to people on the call. “We should be litigating why the Democrats suck and how Republicans are going to win the majority.” “People who voted to impeach stand by their decision, but they don’t want to be litigating that,” a top Republican operative told me. They say Cheney is hurting the electoral prospects of the anti-Trumpers in the conference, who are being asked about her, rather than Biden, when they return home to their districts. That sentiment is behind the exasperation with Cheney that extends even to some of the Republicans who joined her in voting for Trump’s second impeachment, according to two GOP lawmakers. Cheney and her allies say Trump is an electoral loser for the GOP and won’t fade on his own others argue his influence is diminishing and it’s disastrous to keep fighting the last war. Rather, it’s a disagreement about how influential an out-of-office Trump continues to be on the party and whether, politically speaking, GOP energy is best spent fighting him or President Joe Biden. The divide is deeper than pro- or anti-Trump. At this point, the conflict isn’t so much about Cheney’s principles it’s about the way she’s gone about articulating them, publicly and privately. 3 Republican in the House because she has continued to make Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud the center of her public remarks.īut that is a partial understanding of the dynamics at work, which have more to do with the inside game essential to political survival in Washington, including Cheney’s ability-or inability, as the case may be-to cultivate the loyalty of colleagues, donors and friendly journalists. Republican lawmakers, the narrative goes, are campaigning to oust her from her leadership role as the No. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is being martyred for having the courage of her convictions, and the House Republican Conference can no longer abide her truth-telling. To hear most media observers tell it, Rep.
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Eliana Johnson is editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon.