“I’m going to be a better leader, Liz is going to be a better leader,” McCarthy said, according to Republicans in the room, ending with a plea: “Let me lead.”
The room burst into an ovation that echoed through the halls outside the basement auditorium.
McCarthy accomplished his goal of defeating a motion to eject Cheney from the leadership team. But the intense “family discussion,” as Republicans called their more than four-hour session Wednesday, produced its share of raw emotion, a sign the party’s deep divisions will far outlast this moment.
“This is about the direction of our party, and whether we’re going to be, you know, a minority dedicated to just one person, or we’re going to be a Republican, a united Republican majority,” Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), who also voted to impeach, told reporters on her way into the meeting.
The secret ballot on Cheney’s future helped cement the impression that the House GOP can be broken into three camps: One that embraces traditional GOP conservatism embodied by Cheney’s father, the former vice president, and the Bush family; one that embraces Trump’s ideology of grievance and America-first populism; and another that floats back and forth.
Cheney represents that first group, while Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) lead the Trump-centric group. McCarthy seems to move between the two sides.
On Jan. 6, even after rioters stormed the Capitol trying to overturn Trump’s defeat, two-thirds of House Republicans, including McCarthy, voted to oppose the certification of President Biden’s victory.
Then Wednesday night, McCarthy led the effort to keep Cheney in her leadership post, producing a 145-to-61 vote.
Because of that fluid group that floats between the two ensconced camps, many Republicans thought there was a good chance Cheney would get ejected for her apostasy against Trump.
Some hoped that she would blunt her critics by showing some contrition for her vote, or how her statements have been used against Republicans who opposed impeachment. But she offered no olive branches in her remarks early in the meeting.
What had been missing for weeks was McCarthy’s own leadership, as he vacillated on any number of issues. After voting to reject Biden’s victory, McCarthy said Trump bore responsibility for the riot and called for his censure by Congress, only to back away from that claim and dash to the ex-president’s Palm Beach resort last week to ask for his help in winning the House majority in 2022.
As Cheney seemed to twist in the wind, her allies complained that McCarthy had not forcefully defended her. “I think leaders have a responsibility to lead. We’ll see if they do,” Herrera Beutler told reporters as the meeting kicked off.
McCarthy delivered opening remarks that called for unity and defended Cheney, but the outcome still seemed up in the air. “I think it’s too early to predict a final outcome,” Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) told reporters during a brief break 90 minutes into the marathon session.
More senior lawmakers spoke on her behalf toward the end of the meeting, including a key rival — Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who previously held the House Republican Conference chair post that Cheney won in late 2018.
McMorris Rodgers told her colleagues that Cheney had undermined her in the position and felt betrayed by it, yet she was there to defend her now because ejecting Cheney would have torn the GOP apart.
“This was not the time to remove her, it’s the time for us to pull together,” she told reporters afterward.
And then McCarthy got up to close the debate, delivering a speech that went against his stereotypical addresses that stumble across words and fall flat when he attempts soaring rhetoric.
This time, according to advisers, he viewed House Republicans as bitterly divided as they were in the fall of 2015, when John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) retired as speaker and they spent weeks trying to nominate a successor. McCarthy initially tried to get the votes, but Jordan led a hard-line bloc that withheld their support and he withdrew.
As he reminded Republicans on Wednesday, he then endured weeks of rumors of marital infidelity spread by conservative activists who opposed him for speaker. He stuck around as majority leader and, after Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) resigned as speaker and Republicans lost the majority, McCarthy got the promotion to the top job as minority leader.
He infuriated traditional Republicans by brokering detente with Jordan as he awarded him a top committee post, then watched as dozens of veteran Republicans announced retirements ahead of the November elections that seemed poised to deliver a resounding defeat.
Instead, Republicans picked up more than 10 seats and are within striking distance of winning the House back in two years — and the ovation he received gave Republicans, however briefly, the sense of unity they need.
“You know what that means? Two years from now we’ll win the majority because this conference is more united,” McCarthy told reporters afterward.
But by Thursday afternoon, Cheney’s critics were talking openly about their effort to round up support for a primary challenge against her back home next year to actually knock her entirely out of Congress.
“I don’t think unity means keeping someone in leadership who’s got a 10 percent approval rating among Republicans in her own district,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who traveled to Wyoming last week for an anti-Cheney rally, told reporters.
