When Republican members of the House of Representatives gather Wednesday to oust Rep. Liz Cheney from the third-highest post in the GOP Conference, they will be reacting to public statements from the two women and the outcry that followed — and not taking into account any hard data.
Cheney has been a vocal defender of the 2020 election results and highly critical of Donald Trump's role in instigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The anti-Cheney forces who have coalesced around Rep. Elise Stefanik argue that the Wyoming lawmaker and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney is out of step with conservative ideology and therefore not fit to lead Republican messaging efforts during the midterm election cycle.
But the data says otherwise.
CQ Roll Call, which has been tracking voting data for decades, provided its latest numbers on Cheney and Stefanik. From 2017 to 2020, Cheney's party unity score (the percentage of votes cast in line with a majority of her party, against a majority of the Democratic Party) ranged from 92 to 96. Stefanik hit a high of 88 in 2017 and a low of 68 in 2019.
CQ Roll Call also measures presidential support (how often a member of Congress votes in line with the president's position). Cheney's scores during the four years of Trump's presidency were 94, 96, 97 and 87. Stefanik scored 86, 93, 61 and 83.
With Joe Biden in the White House, Cheney continues to demonstrate more party loyalty when voting. According to CQ Roll Call, Cheney has voted in line with Biden 4 percent of the time, while Stefanik has done so on 26 percent of the votes. The team at FiveThirtyEight offers a similar statistic. They found that Cheney has yet to side with Biden on any votes, while Stefanik has voted in line with the president 19 percent of the time. ("Voting in line with the president" is a subjective data point that requires a determination of the president's position.)
So really this is a story of rhetoric, and how Stefanik's use of political language has evolved since she was elected in 2014. Stefanik, like Cheney, was an "establishment" Republican, having worked in George W. Bush's administration and for the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan campaign in 2012.
In fact, she began her congressional service as a moderate Republican, opposing some of Donald Trump's core positions, joining the center-leaning collection of House Republicans known as the Tuesday Group, and advocating for more women in politics.
But as Cheney stood up for Democratic norms and defended the results of the 2020 election, Stefanik sided with Trump and opposed congressional certification on Jan. 6, the day of the insurrection at the Capitol.
Here are some of Cheney's statements about Trump:
"The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution." (public statement, Jan. 12)
"While embracing or ignoring Trump's statements might seem attractive to some for fundraising and political purposes, that approach will do profound long-term damage to our party and our country. Trump has never expressed remorse or regret for the attack of Jan. 6 and now suggests that our elections, and our legal and constitutional system, cannot be trusted to do the will of the people. This is immensely harmful, especially as we now compete on the world stage against Communist China and its claims that democracy is a failed system. (Washington Post opinion piece, May 5)
Stefanik, on the other hand, has continued to endorse debunked conspiracies about election fraud and complained about "cancel culture."
But now Republicans are about to cancel one of their most loyal conservatives.
Go deeper into the Stefanik-Cheney fight that is dividing Republicans:
How Liz Cheney lost Republican support ahead of Stefanik vote this week (Fox News)
Cheney's getting dumped because of the GOP's elections push (The Washington Post)
The 'Handmaiden of Trump': How Elise Stefanik Went From Moderate to MAGA (Time)
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.