There is a Cheney back in House GOP leadership.
Republican lawmakers in a voice vote Wednesday elected Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, the No. 3 position in leadership and a job her father held more than three decades ago.
{mosads}Dick Cheney, the former Wyoming congressman, went on to become House GOP whip, Defense secretary under former President George H.W. Bush and then vice president during the George W. Bush administration. Sporting a cowboy hat, he attended Wednesday’s election in support of his daughter.
Allies of the Cheney family are also expecting big things from Liz Cheney, but for now they are thrilled the 52-year-old has won a seat at the leadership table. She ran unopposed for the position.
“Liz is a confident leader. She’s always carried herself with purpose,” said Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.). “She’s going to be sharp for the conference. She’s going to be direct. And she’ll be able to lead us where we need to go.”
First-term Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) said the party will benefit from Cheney’s leadership.
“I love that she is a Republican woman and a good face for the Republican Party,” Lesko said. “She’s a woman on her own, she is very well spoken and she has already spoken out on a number of national issues.”
Cheney succeeds Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) as GOP conference chair and the highest-ranking woman in Republican leadership in the Capitol. McMorris Rodgers has held the post for the past six years and had made a push to become GOP whip in the majority. She bowed out of leadership after Democrats took back the majority in last week’s midterm elections.
As head of the roughly 200-member GOP conference, Cheney will help develop party messaging, handle member relations and oversee weekly conference meetings and elections.
In her letter to colleagues seeking the new role, Cheney said the GOP needed to do a better job communicating to voters and to find new ways to “own the daily news cycles.”
“Although the 115th Congress has been one of the most productive in history, our message isn’t breaking through,” Cheney wrote in last week’s letter. “Despite the tremendous success of the Trump economy, tax cuts, historic regulatory reform, and crucial efforts to begin rebuilding our military and restoring American strength and power, we will be in the minority in the 116th Congress. For us to prevail in this new environment, we must fundamentally overhaul and modernize our House GOP communications operation.”
She went on to say that many of the upcoming battles will be fought in the court of public opinion.
“We need to be able to drive our message across all platforms. We need to own the daily news cycles. We need to lead and win the messaging wars,” Cheney wrote. “Too often we have found ourselves playing catch up without access to useful information, and we have not been on offense. Constantly playing defense in the battle of communications is a recipe for failure.”