Who you gonna call? Ghost Busters?
Not exactly.
From New York, Albany originally, but moving northward to chase opportunity, the New Republic has published:
Why the GOP Is Backing Elise Stefanik in Her War Against Liz Cheney
It’s not Stefanik’s record that matters. It’s her devotion to Donald Trump.
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesNot so long ago, Liz Cheney was being presented as “a new thought leader for the GOP” and even the second coming of Margaret Thatcher. As Donald Trump continued to spread wild lies about the 2020 election, political reporters upheld Cheney as a voice of reason and a beacon around which “principled” Republicans could gather.
The Washington media loves an intraparty split, and in Cheney’s apostasy they thought they had it. True conservatives—those who favored government so small you could drown it in a bathtub and endless foreign wars—could rally around Cheney. Those devoted to authoritarianism and the perpetuation of a Dear Leader cult would continue worshipping Donald Trump. These factions would duke it out to decide the most important political narrative of all: the Future of the Party.
When Cheney survived an attempt to strip her of her leadership role in the House Republican caucus earlier this year, it was seen as a triumph for her camp. It meant that there was a possibility, no matter how slim, of a GOP shorn of Donald Trump. Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, and the last remaining members of the Lincoln Project might finally fulfill the Never Trump dream.
It hasn’t turned out that way at all. A second bid to oust Cheney from her leadership role will almost certainly succeed. Her likely replacement, Elise Stefanik, has a far more moderate voting record than Cheney and was far more likely to buck Trump when he was president. But when it has counted—on impeachment and on the Big Lie that the election was stolen, in particular—she has been a rabid supporter of Trump, even by the standards of congressional Republicans.
The differences between Cheney and Stefanik, who was a loud and vocal critic of Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 election, have led to some consternation in the press, which has marveled at the willingness with which the GOP has cast off the scion of one of the most important conservatives of the last half-century in favor of an unscrupulous climber. But it’s Stefanik’s total lack of principles that makes her the perfect fit for the current GOP.
Wikipedia notes her poor little rich girl background, and a Bush background, similar to Bill Barr's - but lower level apparatchik
Early life, education, and career
Elise Stefanik was born in Albany, New York, in 1984 to Melanie and Ken Stefanik. Her parents own Premium Plywood Products, a wholesale plywood distributor based in Guilderland Center.[5] She is of Czech and Italian descent.[6]
Stefanik graduated from the Albany Academy for Girls, and then enrolled at Harvard College, graduating with a degree in Government in 2006.[7][8] While at Harvard, she received an honorable mention for the Women's Leadership Award.[9]
After graduating from Harvard, she joined the administration of President George W. Bush,[10] working as staff to the Domestic Policy Council.[11] Stefanik worked in the office of the White House Chief of Staff for Joshua Bolten, Bush's second deputy chief of staff.[11] She also helped prepare the Republican platform in 2012, served as director of new media for Tim Pawlenty's presidential exploratory committee, and worked at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Foreign Policy Initiative.[12] Stefanik managed Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan's debate preparation during the 2012 presidential election.[10][13] Following the Romney–Ryan loss in the 2012 presidential election, she returned to upstate New York, and joined her parents' business.[13]
The career shows that in today's GOP sucking up to Trump is not just a path, but The Path, even if an early critic but late convert. If you keep singing the hymn once you've given trust to the words. As in career advancement via being, in effect, a female Lindsey Graham?
She took that path. Liz Cheney did not. Knives are being sharpened. Not for Stefanik, who's today's GOP face of the future. Bless them.
She's not too distant in outlook and career aims from Kevin McCarthy. Perhaps even liked by Mitch. By Lindsey Graham, who's also a convenient convert to Trumpamania.
And that image. Darling of the rich Republican old farts. Loving every minute of it. Gee!
Gary Gross in his current web location opines of Cheney, "Good riddance to Cheney. If it's true that pride goeth before the fall,
then Cheney's demise is inevitable. She put herself ahead of the team." Talking now of Trump in the plural, as "team." Next, "his excellency, the team?"
Politico reports.
________UPDATE________
Breitbart fuels the fire even hotter than Gary did. "Sabotage," they scream. Sabotage of, who, "the team?"
_______FURTHER UPDATE_______
Arguably of the somewhat bothering "doth protest too much" anti-Trump screed faction - The New Yorker:
Trump has learned the lesson of previous demagogues: the bigger and more flagrant the untruth, the better to prove the fealty of his Party. After all, it actually demands more loyalty to follow your leader into an absurd conspiracy theory than it does to toe the official line when it doesn’t require a mass suspension of disbelief. Back in January, the Big Lie had been rightly affixed to Trump’s preposterous falsehoods about the “rigged election” and his followers’ insurrection, on January 6th, to prevent Congress from certifying the results. His claims were so preposterous that a lawyer who advanced them on Trump’s behalf, Sidney Powell, is now defending herself in court with a filing that states “no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.” There was no fraud. Or, as Trump might put it, if he weren’t lying about it, “NO FRAUD!” And yet Trump has successfully proved throughout the past few months that the repetition of these lies over and over again—even without accompanying evidence—is more than enough to get millions of Americans to believe him. He has run this play before. He knows that it works. Fake News indeed.
The striking difference is that, this time, Liz Cheney has chosen to fight him on it. If Trump does manage to reinvent “the Big Lie” in service of his own corrupt ends, Cheney will at least have forced members of her party into admitting, on the record, that they are making a choice between truth and Trump’s untruth—and choosing the latter. There is no hope among her supporters and advisers that she will win the fight, when the House Republican Conference votes, likely next week, to boot her. Instead, there is a recognition that Cheney has finally decided to do what most of the Trump skeptics within the Party were reluctant to for four years: publicly challenge not only Trump’s lies but the enablers within the G.O.P. who give his lies such power. “It’s all got to do with fealty to Trump and the Big Lie and the fact that Liz is a living reproach to all these cowards,” Eric Edelman, a friend of Cheney’s who served as a national-security adviser to her father, former Vice-President Dick Cheney, told me.
Saying something over and over does not make it truer and truer. I only voted - by mail - and did not count any votes, so I should trust that story version which is published most frequently, or allow that voting fraud might have occurred as it apparently did in Florida in 2000, per the Gore wish then for an honest meaningful recount?
Fact, beyond dispute - Biden's now in the White House, like it or love it.
Trump's out. Pissing and moaning. With a GOP legion of supporting hanger-ons.
Doing the same.
(Or is it "hangers-on" - like Attorneys General - what's the proper usage?)
_______FURTHER UPDATE_______
Stefanik is part of the problem when military waste is considered.
Washinton Times, 2015, reported:
In addition to her spot on the defense policy bill conference committee, Ms. Stefanik also serves as the vice chairwoman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness. The leadership roles are both an opportunity to gain experience in Congress as well as get priorities into legislation that could help her home district, giving her ammunition to defend herself next election, said Steve Billet, director of the Legislative Affairs Master’s Degree program at George Washington University.
[...]
Ms. Stefanik’s most recent victory was uniting the New York members of Congress to spare Fort Drum from drastic cuts when the Army announced it would be reducing its end strength by 40,000 people. While some bases saw thousands of troops cut, Fort Drum will only lose 28 soldiers.
[emphasis added] So, every taxpayer in the nation pays something for this Republican promoting pork in her district.
The Army, itself, wanted to shave unnecessary waste; but who howls louder than a Congress critter about waste removal, in his/her District? With that kind of people in office, military waste will live in perpetuity. Other more deserving domestic spending, Medicare for All as an example, go unfunded, while DoD pork prospers; even where DoD itself saw unneeded excess spending to curb.
Her reelection mojo trumped her willingness to see waste curtailed. Bless her judgment. She's been reelected.