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<\/p>\nWASHINGTON \u2014 The first time defenders of Donald J. Trump came for Representative Liz Cheney, for the offense of having voted to impeach him, fellow Republicans closed ranks to save her leadership post, with Representative Kevin McCarthy boasting that their \u201cbig tent\u201d party had enough room for both the former president and a stalwart critic.<\/p>\n
Evidently, not anymore.<\/p>\n
Just three months after she beat back a no-confidence vote by lopsided margins, Ms. Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, is facing a far more potent challenge that appears increasingly likely to end in her ouster from leadership. This time, Mr. McCarthy, the minority leader, is encouraging the effort to replace her.<\/p>\n
Her transgression, colleagues say: Ms. Cheney\u2019s continued public criticism of Mr. Trump, her denunciation of his lies about a stolen election and her demands that the G.O.P. tell the truth about how his supporters assaulted democracy during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.<\/p>\n
The turnabout reflects anew the passion with which Republicans have embraced Mr. Trump and the voters who revere him, and how willing many in the party are to perpetuate \u2014 or at least tolerate \u2014 falsehoods about the 2020 election that he has continued to spread.<\/p>\n
What began as a battle over the party\u2019s future after the violent end to the Trump presidency has collapsed into a one-sided pile-on by Team Trump, with critics like Ms. Cheney, the scion of a storied Republican family and the lone woman in her party\u2019s House leadership, ostracized or moving toward the exits.<\/p>\n
The latest test for Ms. Cheney could come as soon as next week, when a growing group of Republicans is planning a fresh bid to dethrone her, with Mr. McCarthy\u2019s blessing. Many of her colleagues are now so confident that it will succeed that they are openly discussing who will replace Ms. Cheney.<\/p>\n
The tensions escalated on Tuesday, when Mr. McCarthy went on Mr. Trump\u2019s favorite news program, \u201cFox & Friends,\u201d to question whether Ms. Cheney could effectively carry out her role as the party\u2019s top messenger. (Beforehand, he told a Fox reporter, \u201cI\u2019ve had it with her,\u201d and \u201cI\u2019ve lost confidence,\u201d according to a leaked recording of the exchange published by Axios.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI have heard from members concerned about her ability to carry out the job as conference chair, to carry out the message,\u201d Mr. McCarthy said during the portion of the interview that aired. \u201cWe all need to be working as one, if we\u2019re able to win the majority.\u201d<\/p>\n
With onetime allies closing in, Ms. Cheney, known for her steely temperament, has only dug in harder. Minutes after Mr. McCarthy\u2019s TV hit, she sent her barbed reply through a spokesman, effectively suggesting that the minority leader and Republicans moving against her were complicit in Mr. Trump\u2019s dissembling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is about whether the Republican Party is going to perpetuate lies about the 2020 election and attempt to whitewash what happened on Jan. 6,\u201d said Jeremy Adler, the spokesman. \u201cLiz will not do that. That is the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the few Republican voices willing to rise to Ms. Cheney\u2019s defense was Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who has himself come under attack from his party for his unrepentant criticism of Mr. Trump \u2014 even getting booed at the Utah Republican Party convention on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery person of conscience draws a line beyond which they will not go: Liz Cheney refuses to lie,\u201d Mr. Romney wrote on Twitter. \u201cAs one of my Republican Senate colleagues said to me following my impeachment vote: \u2018I wouldn\u2019t want to be a member of a group that punished someone for following their conscience.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Many House Republicans insist they have no problem with Ms. Cheney\u2019s vote to impeach Mr. Trump, which she described as a vote of conscience. Nor, they say, are they bothered by her neoconservative policy positions, which skew \u2014 like those of her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney \u2014 toward a hawkishness that is at odds with the \u201cAmerica First\u201d slant of the party that Mr. Trump cemented.<\/p>\n
But they fear that Ms. Cheney\u2019s refusal to stop criticizing Mr. Trump or condemning the events of Jan. 6 could weaken the party\u2019s message going into the 2022 midterm elections, when they hope to portray Democrats as big-government socialists so villainous they should be voted out of the majority. It has also infuriated Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n
Many, including Mr. McCarthy, had hoped that after surviving the February vote of no confidence, Ms. Cheney, as an elected leader, would make like the rest of the party and simply move on.<\/p>\n
Instead, she has doubled down and at times turned her fire on colleagues. The final straw for many came last week in Orlando, where Republicans gathered for their annual policy retreat in hopes of putting on a show of unity.<\/p>\n
Ms. Cheney told Punchbowl News that she would campaign in Wyoming \u2014 where she faces a primary challenge \u2014 defending her impeachment vote \u201cevery day of the week.\u201d She told reporters that any lawmaker who led the bid to invalidate President Biden\u2019s electoral victory in Congress should be disqualified from running for president. And she broke with leading Republicans when she said a proposed independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot should focus on the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, rather than scrutinizing violence by antifa and Black Lives Matter, as Mr. McCarthy and other Republicans have demanded.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A few days later, she drew attacks from the right for fist-bumping Mr. Biden at his speech before a joint session of Congress, and took to Twitter to defend herself for greeting the president \u201cin a civil, respectful & dignified way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not sworn enemies,\u201d she wrote. \u201cWe\u2019re Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Monday, after Mr. Trump issued a statement calling the 2020 election \u201cfraudulent\u201d and \u201cTHE BIG LIE,\u201d Ms. Cheney quickly tweeted her rebuttal, writing that anyone who made such claims was \u201cpoisoning our democratic system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some Republicans privately likened her performance to picking at a scab, and many of Mr. Trump\u2019s allies saw it as an opening to try again to depose her.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiz has attempted (is FAILING badly) to divide our party,\u201d Representative Lance Gooden, Republican of Texas, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, emulating Mr. Trump\u2019s caustic Twitter style. \u201cTrump is still the LEADER of the GOP, Liz! I look forward to her being removed SOON!\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Cheney\u2019s troubles chart a rapid shift for the Republican Party in the few months since Mr. Trump left Washington. Early on, she was part of a small but influential group of Republicans that included Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, and condemned Mr. Trump\u2019s role in stoking the riot with false claims of a stolen election. But many of those lawmakers have since gone quiet, leaving Ms. Cheney, who once was enthusiastically spoken of as a future speaker or president, isolated.<\/p>\n
Ms. Cheney declined through a spokesman to comment, and several of her allies in the House would not speak on the record in her defense, underscoring the fraught nature of the vote and the pessimism some of them feel about her chances of surviving another challenge. A spokeswoman for Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, another Republican who voted to impeach Mr. Trump and has been a leading critic of the former president, said in a statement that the congressman \u201cunequivocally supports Liz Cheney for conference chair.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those who know her best say privately that the Ms. Cheney\u2019s predicament reflects both her principles and her personality, including a stubborn streak that sometimes prompts her to act against her self-interest. One ally who has been exasperated by her in recent months described her actions as classic Liz Cheney: She will always do what she thinks is right, the Republican said on Tuesday, but she will just never stop to think she\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n
With Ms. Cheney hemorrhaging support, Republicans have already begun cycling through names of possible replacements for a post traditionally seen as a steppingstone to the top party positions. Mindful of the optics of replacing the only woman in leadership with another man, Republicans are eyeing choosing a woman.<\/p>\n
The leading contender appears to be Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, a rising star in her fourth term who has long toiled to increase the number of women in the Republican ranks and has more recently become a fierce defender of Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n
Ms. Stefanik, 36, has begun reaching out to Republican lawmakers to gauge their support, according to two people familiar with the private conversations, and by Tuesday evening, one of her political aides was retweeting speculation that she would \u201cmake an outstanding conference chair.\u201d<\/p>\n
Representative Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania, a member of the Republican leadership who initially whipped votes for Ms. Cheney, said that he was counting potential votes for Ms. Stefanik and believed the job would be hers if she ran. <\/p>\n
Republicans have also floated Representative Jackie Walorski of Indiana as a possible alternative. As the top Republican on the Ethics Committee, Ms. Walorski this year successfully balanced the job of condemning Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene\u2019s past conspiratorial statements while arguing she should not be kicked off her committees.<\/p>\n