Attacking Cheney, Kinzinger may not help New York GOP
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) listen during a hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite
The Republican National Committee’s movers and shakers last week censured two of the party’s elected officials essentially for doing their jobs: taking part in a congressional inquiry.
Three prominent New Yorkers sit on the 168-member RNC — State GOP chairman Nick Langworthy, New York City education expert Jennifer Saul-Rich, and Allegany County oil businessman Charles Joyce. The trio went along with denouncing Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, the two GOP members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
State Republican Party chairman Nick Langworthy. Credit: Charles Eckert
Langworthy on Thursday declared his "strong support" for the censure, in a statement conveyed by a spokeswoman. He branded Cheney and Kinzinger as "willful tools" of the Democrats, accusing them of "aiding and abetting" the rival party’s political agenda. And he called the riot inquiry "a sham."
Beyond the resolution’s grandiose rhetoric about the Capitol protesters taking part in "legitimate political discourse," the message was above all a sign of deference to defeated ex-President Donald Trump.
For New York Republicans, the resolution could mean further strategic obstacles on a road full of them.
Common sense tells you it would be a prudent idea for party leaders to distance local candidates from Trump’s deliberate lies and defaming of constitutional processes. They are aiming, after all, to credibly campaign as an outnumbered opposition party against blue-state incumbents.
But this latest chapter could force all genuinely conservative New Yorkers who don’t really buy into the party’s six-year cult of leadership to answer again for a stained national brand. It is a burden they do not need. It suggests to the unbiased that the governmental positions they take are boss-controlled and less than independent.
One topsy-turvy feature of this drama is that the two condemned Republicans’ caucus chief, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, clearly sides with the RNC while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who has abided nasty abuse from Trump at every turn, criticized the resolution.
The party as an organization remains so fixated on Trump loyalty that the mildest disagreement is still treated as defiance, just as when he was in the White House. And it makes you wonder whether GOP leadership can tolerate the slightest independence of thinking from its candidates.
McConnell’s language wasn’t a call to rebellion. He said it is "not the job of the RNC" to be "singling out members of our party who may have different views from the majority." He again called Jan. 6 a "violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election."
Even milder was ex-Vice President Mike Pence’s recent statement to an elite Federalist Society luncheon that "President Trump is wrong" in claiming that Pence had the right to overturn the 2020 election.
In 2019, then-Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan) entered the national spotlight. A founding Freedom Caucus member, his credentials were impeccably libertarian and conservative — anti-abortion, opposed to the Obama administration’s foreign policy, a backer of smaller government. But he voted, with a clear and sane constitutional rationale, for Trump’s impeachment, and was effectively pushed out of the Republican fold.
Last week’s RNC censure was panned by some Republicans in other states. Surely, honest conservatives in New York are tired of the protected Trump camp’s demeaning and targeting of his GOP critics.
But they have yet to be heard from.
n COLUMNIST DAN JANISON’S opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
