Fellow House Republicans have booted Liz Cheney from GOP leadership, punishment for her having the stones to challenge Donald Trump's poisonous and anti-democratic falsehoods about the 2020 election.
Cheney is no longer conference chair. But until Wyoming voters repudiate her, she will remain an independently elected representative in the party of Lincoln, Reagan and, regrettably, Trump. Which means it remains her duty and her charge to continue to use her voice to speak the truth. That she did in her speech Tuesday night. It was short, but critically important: "Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar." Republicans can make her a pariah, but they cannot shut her up.
In fact, by booting Cheney from her position, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the rest of the party underlines how thin the spooked elephant's skin remains. They communicate to the nation that rather than rise to the challenge of rebutting Cheney's facts about Trump with evidence of their own (which, ahem, they don't have), they'll just swap her out for an apologist who parrots Trump lines and lies, in this case New York's Elise Stefanik.
That's what McCarthy and company seem not to get: Their attempt to bury Cheney elevates her. She isn't now just a dissident to the Trumpite politburo; she's been officially deemed a threat and erased from the portrait, making her a symbol of the lengths to which the former president and his minions will go to perpetuate their baseless myths. She is gaining national stature she never could have dreamed of otherwise.
The kicker-outers may get a momentary rush of satisfaction by declaring her -- along with Sen. Mitt Romney, and former Sen. Jeff Flake, and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich -- persona non grata. But as millions of Republicans who were already repulsed by Trump, especially after his COVID failures and the Jan. 6 insurrection, see the shriveled, servile, small-tent party their former political home has become, they're bound to part ways with the GOP.
And Liz will have the last laugh.