Republican Party officials voted Friday to punish GOP Reps. Liz Cheney & Adam Kinzinger for their work on a House committee investigating Jan. 6’s insurrection. They also proposed a rule change that would ban candidates from participating at debates organized and managed by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
At the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting, Salt Lake City, GOP officials voted to approve censuring Cheney & Kinzinger. Members of an RNC subcommittee voted to support the censure resolution against them instead of calling for their expulsion.
The censure resolution accuses Kinzinger, Cheney, of “participating a Democrat–led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged with legitimate political discourse” — a vivid description of the attack on the Capitol by supporters.
It also urges the party not to support Cheney or Kinzinger as Republicans.
The only two Republicans in the House committee that is investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 are Cheney (from Wyoming) and Kinzinger (from Illinois). Trump and other GOP members were furious when Kinzinger, Cheney and Nancy Pelosi accepted Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to join the Democratic House committee. This gave the Jan. 6 panel some bipartisan credibility.
Trump has endorsed Harriet Hageman as her primary opponent. She could be benefited by Cheney’s decision to withhold support. Wyoming’s primary election is August.
Kinzinger will not be running for reelection.
RNC members voted for a rule change to prohibit candidates from participating in the Commission on Presidential Debates’ debates. Although the institution has been a fixture of presidential elections for over three decades, Republicans have decried its biased nature.
Ronna McDaniel, chair of the RNC, stated in a Friday speech that “restoring faith in our elections means making certain our candidate can compete in a level playing field.”
She said, “We aren’t walking away from presidential debates. We are walking away form the commission on presidential debats because it is a biasedmonopoly that doesn’t serve the best interests for the American people.”
