Post by LFC on May 6, 2021 20:16:40 GMT
The name currently being most publicly floated to replace Liz Cheney in her leadership position is Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Turns out she originally ran as somewhat of a moderate Republican but she fell in line ... bigly. Now she's goose stepping her way to conference chair. She's all in on The Big Lie and that is now the main requirement to represent Republicans.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is inching closer to succeeding Rep. Liz Cheney (WY) as conference chair in an ouster poised to erase some of the few remaining vestiges of opposition to former President Donald Trump’s enduring power within the GOP caucus that has been buoyed by falsehood over a stolen election.
Stefanik has dramatically shifted from a more moderate wing of the Republican Party when she was first elected in 2014 to represent a battleground district in upstate New York to a staunch Trump supporter — qualifications that appear to have become prerequisites for the post she is now positioned to seize.
But it hasn’t always been that way.
Before first winning her seat in Congress at age 30, Stefanik had served as an aide in the Bush administration aide and later campaigned for former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI). Stefanik only reluctantly rallied behind Trump when he won the GOP nomination in 2016, declining at first to call him by name and instead referring to him as “my party’s nominee” — a move distinctly at odds with her posture today.
By the time that the congresswoman entered her fourth-term in January, she had already spent years laying the groundwork to carry Trump’s message. In 2019, Stefanik emerged as of Trump’s biggest defenders during his first impeachment when she was selected for his defense team. She carried key conspiracy-like GOP claims — arguing in one stunt that her constituents had “many concerns” about now-President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and his role in a Ukrainian gas company.
“For the millions of Americans viewing today, the two most important facts are the following: Number one, Ukraine received the aid. Number two, there was, in fact, no investigation into Biden,” she said during the hearing in November 2019.
Cheney, notably also defended Trump at that time. But Stefanik, who held a far more moderate voting record than Cheney, continued past impeachment to sculpt herself an increasingly Trump-shaped space, rushing to his defense at the supposed peril of democracy.
Stefanik has dramatically shifted from a more moderate wing of the Republican Party when she was first elected in 2014 to represent a battleground district in upstate New York to a staunch Trump supporter — qualifications that appear to have become prerequisites for the post she is now positioned to seize.
But it hasn’t always been that way.
Before first winning her seat in Congress at age 30, Stefanik had served as an aide in the Bush administration aide and later campaigned for former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI). Stefanik only reluctantly rallied behind Trump when he won the GOP nomination in 2016, declining at first to call him by name and instead referring to him as “my party’s nominee” — a move distinctly at odds with her posture today.
By the time that the congresswoman entered her fourth-term in January, she had already spent years laying the groundwork to carry Trump’s message. In 2019, Stefanik emerged as of Trump’s biggest defenders during his first impeachment when she was selected for his defense team. She carried key conspiracy-like GOP claims — arguing in one stunt that her constituents had “many concerns” about now-President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and his role in a Ukrainian gas company.
“For the millions of Americans viewing today, the two most important facts are the following: Number one, Ukraine received the aid. Number two, there was, in fact, no investigation into Biden,” she said during the hearing in November 2019.
Cheney, notably also defended Trump at that time. But Stefanik, who held a far more moderate voting record than Cheney, continued past impeachment to sculpt herself an increasingly Trump-shaped space, rushing to his defense at the supposed peril of democracy.
