Trump’s Pick to Replace Liz Cheney Had Horrible MAGA Cred and Criticized Him – Until Very Recently
WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 21: Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, questions witnesses during a House Intelligence Committee impeachment inquiry hearing on Capitol Hill November 21, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images)
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is the odds on favorite to replace the embattled Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) as Chair of the House Republican Conference, the third-highest position in the House GOP. Cheney has run afoul of her party because she has called out Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. House Republicans are expected to oust Cheney in a vote next week.
One might be inclined to think that Stefanik, 36, must have a well-established history of staking out firm positions deeply entrenched in the soil of MAGA-land, especially given that Trump has endorsed her for the number three position.
Stefanik’s record tells a different story, however.
During the Trump years, Stefanik voted with the president 77.7% of the time. Meanwhile, Cheney voted with Trump 92.9% of the time. Moreover, the conservative Heritage Action for America gave Stefanik a paltry 48% for her career on its conservative scorecard, while Cheney received a far more robust 80%. A think tank recently rated Stefanik the 13th most bipartisan member of the House.
CNN’s KFile lists occasions when Stefanik, who in 2015 predicted Trump wouldn’t be her party’s nominee, was critical of him. At one point during the Republican primary, she said, “I think Trump has been insulting to women” after Trump made disparaging comments about then Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. After the infamous Access Hollywood tape was leaked, Stefanik said on Facebook, “Donald Trump’s inappropriate, offensive comments are just wrong – No matter when he said them or whatever the context. I hope his apology is sincere.” She also expressed skepticism about Trump’s border wall.
So how in a few short years did Stefanik go from being seemingly wary of Trump to his top choice for House Conference Chair?
In 2014, Stefanik became the first Republican elected to New York’s 21st congressional district in 24 years, and was the youngest woman ever elected to Congress at the time. She ran as a moderate, which is no surprise given her record and given the district’s history of Democratic representatives, as well as its reliable support of Democratic presidential nominees, who won the district by double digits in every election from 1992 to 2008. In 2012, President Obama won by six points, but remarkably just four years later Donald Trump won it by 14. He won the district again in 2020, by 11.
It is against this evolving backdrop that Rep. Stefanik has been operating as a politician. Her district has become red and Trumpy, and she knows full well the graveyard of congressional careers is increasingly full of casualties that refused to hold on to Trump for dear life. These careers died in Republican primaries at the hands of unabashedly pro-Trump candidacies that were all too happy to bury RINOs, which these days are simply Republicans who don’t support Trump and his lies about the election.
A Harvard educated alum who worked in George W. Bush’s White House, Stefanik knows which way the political winds blow. She’s apparently also ambitious enough to act on this intuition. During Trump’s first impeachment hearings, Stefanik aggressively grilled witnesses and earned praise from Trump himself for doing so. During the trial, she was one of eight House Republicans to serve on the president’s defense team.
More recently, Stefanik has shown an eager willingness to promote Trump’s Big Lie, and she voted not to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“Tens of millions of Americans,” said Stefanik in a statement before the certification vote, “are rightly concerned that the 2020 election featured unprecedented voting irregularities, unconstitutional overreach by unelected state officials and judges ignoring state election laws, and a fundamental lack of ballot integrity and security.”
The statement also said, “To the tens of thousands of constituents and patriots across the country who have reached out to me in the past few weeks – please know that I hear you.”
A CNN poll from last month indicates that 70% of Republicans do not believe Joe Biden won the election legitimately. No doubt some of them live in New York’s 21st congressional district and expect their representative to think – or at least say – the same.
