{"id":477994,"date":"2021-05-06T11:35:43","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T15:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=477994"},"modified":"2021-05-06T11:35:45","modified_gmt":"2021-05-06T15:35:45","slug":"knowles-with-republicans-like-liz-cheney-and-mitt-romney-who-needs-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/knowles-with-republicans-like-liz-cheney-and-mitt-romney-who-needs-democrats\/","title":{"rendered":"KNOWLES: With Republicans Like Liz Cheney And Mitt Romney, Who Needs Democrats?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fknowles-with-republicans-like-liz-cheney-and-mitt-romney-who-needs-democrats%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=477994&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1207533662.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"  style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p>When Utah Republicans booed Mitt Romney off the stage at their party convention on Saturday, the Massachusetts governor-turned-Utah senator responded, \u201cOh yeah, you can boo all you like, but I\u2019ve been a Republican all my life.\u201d It was a bold claim from a man who famously has not voted for a Republican presidential nominee since he himself was on the ballot. But Romney\u2019s defection from the GOP goes back even further than that.<\/p>\n<p>In 1994, during his ill-fated run for Senate against Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts, Romney boasted of his liberal bona fides. \u201cI believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country,\u201d Romney averred at one debate. \u201cI was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush! I\u2019m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush!\u201d he insisted at another. So he was, and indeed he did not. During the 1992 presidential primaries, Romney voted for Democrat senator Paul Tsongas. He joined the Republican Party in 1993 and was elected governor of Massachusetts in 2002 on a \u201cprogressive\u201d platform, a promise he proved in 2006 when he enacted \u201cRomneycare,\u201d the healthcare reform that laid the groundwork for \u201cObamacare\u201d three years later.<\/p>\n<p>Romney hails from the Republican Party\u2019s liberal wing, which his father George represented as governor of Michigan and as a presidential candidate in 1964 and 1968. When the liberal wing dominated and offered him opportunities for advancement, Romney happily supported the party; when more conservative and \u201cpopulist\u201d elements took control in 2016, Romney largely withdrew his support.<\/p>\n<p>Liz Cheney, the embattled leader of the House Republican Conference, has followed a similar political trajectory. Cheney represents the neoconservative faction of the GOP \u2014 liberal imperialists more interested in projecting American influence abroad than waging cultural battles at home. Like Romney and many other leading squishes, Cheney owes her political career to her father, during whose vice presidency she worked in the State Department on Near East affairs. When the neocons dominated the party, Cheney lent it her full support. When more traditionally conservative elements regained influence, Cheney largely withdrew her support, voting for the farcical second impeachment of President Trump and, just this week, parroting Democrat talking points.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe 2020 presidential election was not stolen,\u201d Cheney tweeted on Monday. \u201cAnyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.\u201d For months, Democrats have condemned concerns over the integrity of that election as \u201cthe big lie,\u201d a phrase coined by Adolf Hitler in\u00a0<i>Mein Kampf<\/i>. (Ironically, the phrase initially referred to the alleged strategy of German Jews to blame the pro-Nazi general Erich Ludendorff for Germany\u2019s loss in the First World War\u2014an historical circumstance that casts Democrats as the Nazis in their own analogy\u2014but I digress.)<\/p>\n<p>Reasonable people may disagree over the \u201cirregularities\u201d in the 2020 election: the changes to voting rules, the expansion of ballot \u201cdrop boxes,\u201d and the constitutionality of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. But Liz Cheney refuses to abide such disagreement. The moment her party faction lost influence, Cheney turned on the party, even from a position of leadership.<\/p>\n<p>David French, the sometime conservative columnist, took umbrage at the campaign to remove Cheney from Republican leadership. \u201cIf the House GOP ultimately takes stronger action against Liz Cheney than it did against Marjorie Taylor Greene,\u201d he tweeted, \u201cthen one has to wonder if it\u2019s time to make tough choices about the continued unity of the party.\u201d What choices? What unity? David\u2019s threat to withdraw his support from the GOP might carry more weight had he not already <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DavidAFrench\/status\/1038518024968519680?s=20\">left<\/a> the party in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cfusionist\u201d arrangement of the Cold War conservative movement brought together free marketeers, foreign policy hawks, and traditionalists to defeat the Soviet Union abroad and its useful idiots at home. The fusionists promised a \u201cthree-legged stool,\u201d but the respective legs never stood on equal ground. The traditional conservatives supported the free market fundamentalist faction even when its economic schemes threatened to disrupt cultural stability. They supported the hawks in their oft-misbegotten crusades despite an aversion to overseas adventurism. But the moment traditional conservatives regained influence within the party, their fellows from the other factions headed for the hills when they weren\u2019t attacking them outright.<\/p>\n<p>Politics is the art of inclusion. But calls for a \u201cbig tent party\u201d ring hollow when they come from fair-weather friends who abandon their co-partisans the moment political winds stop blowing in their favor. One cannot count as a teammate the sore loser who takes his ball and goes home. If the squishes will not stand by the conservatives, they have no business in party leadership. Indeed, the have no place in the party at all.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>member<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Utah Republicans booed Mitt Romney off the stage at their party convention on Saturday, the Massachusetts governor-turned-Utah senator responded, \u201cOh yeah, you can boo all you like, but I\u2019ve &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2277448,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1207533662.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"KNOWLES: With Republicans Like Liz Cheney And Mitt Romney, Who Needs Democrats?","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1207533662.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"KNOWLES: With Republicans Like Liz Cheney And Mitt Romney, Who Needs Democrats?","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2277448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}