The ongoing Republican leadership battle in Congress involving Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Conference Chair Liz Cheney over whether Cheney should hold on to her leadership position going forward is set to be resolved later this week as McCarthy has confirmed Wednesday as the day a vote to recall Cheney from that position will take place.

We’ve reported extensively on the war of words between the two camps, and on how Cheney has heavily depended on liberal media outlets who have never been friendly to the GOP in order to get her “message” out. In addition to that have been her epic lapses in judgment in relying on “bombshell” news reports from those same outlets about former President Trump that turned out to be fake news.

Not only has Cheney’s judgment proven particularly unsound when it comes to media schmoozing, foreign policy positions and matters of war, arguments she’s making to her Republican colleagues in the House about how Trump is supposedly bad for the GOP appear to be falling flat for a very good reason, as journalist and Cook Political polling analyst Dave Wasserman explained in a tweet earlier today:

A big reason Liz Cheney's argument that Trump is a detriment to the GOP isn't resonating w/ her GOP colleagues: her case is murky at best.

In the past five years, down-ballot Rs have performed objectively better with Trump *on* the ballot than off.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) May 10, 2021

Wasserman’s detractors in the comments tried to dunk on him by claiming it was a ridiculous argument since Trump won’t be on the ballot in 2022, but those critics are ignoring the fact that while Trump indeed will not be on the ballot, he is still a force to be reckoned with in Republican politics and will be for the foreseeable future.

He’s weighed in on a number of issues recently despite his social media ban, including blasting “warmonger” Cheney and endorsing Rep. Elise Stefanik over Cheney for the Conference Chair position.

And even if he was keeping a relatively low profile and wasn’t issuing periodic statements about the political goings-on in Washington, D.C., Trump’s aggressive style of getting things done and telling the MSM to stuff it is what a not-so-small number of conservative voters now look for in candidates for higher office. Long gone for many Republican voters are the days where playing the media’s games and by the left’s rules was something to be tolerated through gritting teeth.

In other words, if you’re a candidate who takes the Mitt Romney approach to representing your constituents in Congress, your chances of winning a primary let alone an election in a place other than one that is purpling to blue are increasingly slim.

And to reiterate points my colleagues here have already made, contra to media/Dem/Never Trump narratives the Republican House leadership’s pushback on Cheney doesn’t appear to be based on her support for Trump’s impeachment.

It’s because she cannot move on from it and is, in fact, exploiting it (due to possible 2024 ambitions?) at a time when the House GOP needs to be putting on a united front against the Pelosi/Biden agenda, not infighting over the former President and the Capitol riots.

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