Liz Cheney, Marjorie Taylor Greene Survive Closed-Door Meeting of House GOP

After weeks of internecine warfare and a planned assault by House Democrats, Republicans in the U.S. House on Wednesday evening resoundingly voted to keep embattled Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., as chair of the House GOP Conference.

Cheney, who outraged younger conservatives with her vote to impeach former President Donald Trump, survived a move to remove her from the No. 3 GOP leadership position by 145 to 61 (and one abstention).

Lawmakers told us that House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, Calif., and Whip Steve Scalise, La., "whipped hard for a big vote for Cheney."

"Leader McCarthy really made the case for unity and said people keep asking why Republicans have been attacking other Republicans," a freshman lawmaker who requested anonymity told Newsmax after the meeting. "So we essentially decided we are getting back to work and going to win the House in '22."

In a subsequent move during their three-hour meeting behind closed doors, Republicans agreed to stand by Georgia's freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as Democrats were poised to strip the committee assignments from arguably the most controversial Republican member of all.

Greene has been under intense attack from Democrats for liking or retweeting a string of items on Twitter that include endorsing the executions of top Democrats and suggesting that school shootings were staged and that a space laser controlled by Jewish financiers started a wildfire.

The Peach State congresswoman has also tweeted and vocalized some of the views of QAnon, the conspiracy theory about a Satan-worshipping cult within the federal government that sought to undermine Trump.

In her remarks to colleagues Wednesday, sources told us, Greene apologized for her retweeting of statements and insisted she was only trying to learn more about QAnon rather than actually embrace the conspiracy theory.

"It certainly sounded like an apology to me," said one Republican House member of the congresswoman who often voices a Trumpian defiance. "Basically, she did what she had to do to survive."

But the same member stressed to us that "this was not a vote of confidence in Marjorie."

The GOP Conference's decision to stand by Greene, sources agreed, stems less from any attachment to her than the fear of what House Democrats will try to do on Thursday: vote on a rules change that permits the full House to remove Greene from her assignments on the House Education and Labor Committee and the House Budget Committee.

The change, approved by the House Rules Committee, would in effect take the power of the individual parties to name their members to committees and leave the last word to the full House — and to whatever party happens to control it.

McCarthy hit this hard, House Republicans said, and in remarks directed to House Democrat Leader Steny Hoyer, Md., warned that if he went down that path, "We'll have no problem deciding what committees his members sit on when we take the House."

Already, Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, has drawn up a proposal to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for anti-Semitic comments.

Other Republicans feel that the rush to do to Omar what Democrats want to do to Greene only gives greater currency to the rules change that gives the last word on committees to the full House.

Whatever the fate of Greene, it seems clear from the Wednesday meeting that decisions made about her as well as Cheney showed a sign of the unity that many say has escaped House Republicans.

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.