How Purging Liz Cheney From Leadership Will Backfire for the GOP The conventional wisdom that the GOP can survive only by further appeasing Trump is wrong. (Photograph by Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images.) If House GOP leaders move forward with their plan to purge Liz Cheney from leadership, they won’t solve any problems but will instead create even bigger ones for themselves, former President Trump, and the entire GOP. The drawn-out and ham-fisted public campaign to humiliate Cheney for the crime of refuting Trump’s lies has gratuitously insulted not just Cheney, but, by extension, millions of Americans who are permanently unsettled by the events of January 6. The message to conscientious objectors uncomfortably hanging around the GOP is this: You’re not welcome, get out. Even Peggy Noonan is calling the move “cowardly.” She writes, “It will make the party look stupid and weak, as if it can’t tolerate dissent.” Is President Reagan’s premier speechwriter no longer welcome in today’s GOP?