Liz Cheney is in trouble with the crazies again

 House Republican Caucus Chair Liz Cheney is facing renewed criticism from the ranks for her insistence that it's time for the GOP to move on from the Orange Toddler.  Despite turning back a challenge to her leadership position recently, some House Republicans suggest that she'll be ousted from it within a month.

Cheney, who refuses to rule out a run for the White House in 2024, certainly has courage and integrity. Between her and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, traditional Republican conservatives are almost sure to have a candidate to head up an attempt to re-take the party three years hence. The problem is that the party's rank-and-file- voters as well as members of Congress- have so completely lost touch with reality that it's hard to see how anybody sane could have even an outside chance of winning the nomination.

Perhaps she (and maybe Gov. Hogan) think that the Trumpified candidates will split the crazy vote among them and open up a path for a minority viewpoint to win out just as it did with Trump himself in 2016.  That would almost certainly lead to a breakaway movement by the goofy, nativist, racist, authoritarian majority, leaving Cheney or Hogan with a nomination but no party to go with it.  Polls indicate that a substantial percentage of the Republican electorate already think that the GOP isn't Trumpy enough. If our utterly unfit former president says the word, a MAGA party would be a done deal.

That would be one way to save the GOP, of course. Whether there would be anything more worth saving left of it than there is now is another matter.

Still, it's worth celebrating people like Liz Cheney and Larry Hogan (as well as sane Republicans like Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and a few others) who have the intelligence, the patriotism, and the integrity to stand against the intellectual and moral darkness.  I continue to firmly believe that one way or another, sane conservatives are going to have to separate themselves from the bigots and nut jobs and form a different party.  The survival of the movement and the well-being of the Republic both demand it. Maybe if the nativists and authoritarians start their own party, eventually the GOP can not only become the party of Lincoln and Reagan again, but a respectable thing a person with a mind and a conscience can be a part of without embarrassment or compromise