On some planet, the GOP might be considered "moderate" and "reasonable" for a 145-61 vote to not kick Liz Cheney off of her leadership perch. But not this planet. Especially not because they all know she's likely to lose her reelection bid anyway. Wyoming is the most politically backward state in America-- with a PVI of R+25... much worse than even West Virginia and Idaho at R+19 each or Utah and Oklahoma at R+20 each. The last time Wyoming gave its 3 electoral votes to a Democrat was in 1964 when LBJ beat Goldwater in a national landslide. In 2016 Trump won 174,419 (68.17%) to 55,973 (21.88%) and last year he beat Biden 193,559 (69.94%) to 73,491 (26.55%). The 30-member state Senate includes just 2 Democrats and the 60-member state House has 7 Democrats. Wyoming is a flashing 24/7 advertisement for why DC should be granted statehood.
There was a general freakout in Wyoming when Liz Cheney, a member of House leadership voted to impeach Trump. Within a few days Wyoming Republican parties began censuring her. Of 23 counties, 10 voted to censure her by last weekend and yesterday, the state GOP voted to censure her as well-- and by a vote of 56-8. CBS News reported that "The censure resolution says the state party will not raise money for her in the future and also asks that she repay any donations made to her 2020 campaign by the state party and any county parties that request it... The Republican party accused of her not being in touch with the voters of the state. The resolution claims that Republicans in the state have since left the party or changed their voter registration.
Florida Trumpist (and closet case) Matt Gaetz went to Cheyenne to campaign against her and her office told him not to bother bringing his makeup kit because in Wyoming men don't wear makeup. He slammed back that Cheney is just a "Beltway bureaucrat turned fake cowgirl."
Before the vote the GOP congressional caucus, McCarthy tried talking her into apologizing for her vote to impeach. She refused. Axios reported today that she "rolled the dice, refusing her leader's ask and counting on her supporters to keep her as conference chair, the party's No. 3 post in the House. Newly empowered, she's now embracing her role as the Republicans' Trump critic-in-chief... She also doubled down on her condemnation of the former president during a Fox News interview Sunday, telling Chris Wallace that Trump 'does not have a role as the leader of our party going forward... People have been lied to. President Trump, for months leading up to January 6th, spread the notion that the election had been stolen... and people need to understand that.'"
Today, Nick Fandos reported for the NY Times that on Fox today Cheney "waded deeper into Republicans’ identity crisis... She cautioned that the party risked being locked out of power if it did not show a majority of Americans that it could be trusted to lead truthfully. 'The notion that the election had been stolen or that the election was rigged was a lie, and people need to understand that,' Ms. Cheney said on Fox News Sunday. 'We need to make sure that we as Republicans are the party of truth, and that we are being honest about what really did happen in 2020 so we actually have a chance to win in 2022 and win the White House back in 2024.'"
The remarks made plain that Ms. Cheney, a leading Republican voice trying to push the party back toward its traditional policy roots, had no intention of backing off her criticism of the former president after two attempts last week to punish her for her impeachment vote. In Washington, her critics forced a vote to try to oust her as the chairwoman of the House Republican conference, but it failed overwhelmingly on a secret ballot. And on Saturday, the Wyoming Republican Party censured her and called for her resignation.
Answering that call, Ms. Cheney said on Sunday that she would not resign and suggested that Republicans in her home state continued to be fed misinformation about what had taken place... 'People in the party are mistaken,' she said on Fox News of the Jan. 6 attack, which, together with nearby protests, killed five people, including a Capitol Police officer. Referring to the Black Lives Matter movement, she added: 'They believe that B.L.M. and antifa were behind what happened here at the Capitol. That’s just simply not the case, it’s not true, and we’re going to have a lot of work we have to do.'"
...Ms. Cheney also leveled sharp criticism at Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a freshman Republican from Georgia, whose past embrace of QAnon and a range of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic conspiracy theories roiled the House last week. Ms. Cheney said Ms. Greene’s views “do not have any place in our public discourse.”
“We are the party of Lincoln,” Ms. Cheney said. “We are not the party of QAnon or anti-Semitism or Holocaust deniers, or white supremacy or conspiracy theories.”
Some prominent Republican senators backed Ms. Cheney on Sunday, saying they would carefully consider the impeachment case and seek to steer the party back toward conservative policy arguments rather than personality.
...And last week, even as they wagged their fingers at Ms. Greene, a vast majority of Ms. Cheney’s own House Republican conference refused to punish her. Ms. Greene emerged a day after the vote declaring she had been “freed” to push her party rightward.
“The party is his,” Ms. Greene said, referring to Mr. Trump. “It doesn’t belong to anybody else.”
She voted right on impeachment. That's pretty much the only correct vote she's taken.