It’s not unconstitutional and when you tweet stuff like this you look stupid and like you should never have been admitted to a top flight university. https://twitter.com/elisestefanik/status/1390266720544337920

I worked with Elise a little bit when I briefly consulted for Tim Pawlenty. She’s a smart person who is playing stupid. The issue this creates IMO is she is broadcasting inauthenticity, which never works out well for politicians.

Elise already has this problem more than she needs to, and it’s the result of moving around a lot ideologically. She was a GW Bush Republican first (suggests she’s not far off Liz Cheney on foreign policy). Then she became a Paul Ryan type (different but still hawkish).

Now she is positioning as a Trumper. She may honestly have changed her mind about things but I doubt she really agrees with Trump on foreign policy, trade or immigration (and on trade and immigration, I commend her for her dissenting views).

But changing one’s mind is easily conflated with flip-floppery and having no ideological grounding and that’s risky in politics. Biden has done it successfully but he is kind of the exception that proves the rule. Mitt Romney of 2012 is the rule.

There are things I deeply disagree with Liz Cheney on. I suspect many of you agree. But one reason people who disagree with her vehemently have been OK with her in leadership versus more malleable figures is they know exactly where she stands at all times.

What this is really all about on my read: McCarthy knows Liz Cheney will one day become a potentially appealing prospect for Speaker over and above himself. It might be in 2 years it might be in 10, but it’s a risk. He wants that risk gone and now has a great pretext for it.

At the same time, Stefanik also wants to be Speaker. That means she and Cheney are on a collision course. What’s interesting about this is McCarthy is apparently trading one future rival for another. And both Cheney and Stefanik are far more cutthroat than he is.

(For the record, I suspect both would also be far better at McCarthy’s job than he is.) Anyway, that’s a lot of what’s at play here. McCarthy isn’t as strong a leader as he would like which is why he’s having to appease Trump the way he has despite the risks to the party.

Personally, as I indicated on @newsmax this AM, one reason I wouldn’t personally swap Stefanik for Cheney is that I think Stefanik is better at the fundraising and candidate recruitment and training— Ie raw politics— and Cheney is better at the policy.

If you put Stefanik into Cheney’s role, I think she becomes less effective on the raw political side for the party. And I don’t think she can trounce Cheney on policy chops, even tho she is smart. It also seems to me a lot of people saying “Cheney should be focused on policy”...

... are themselves totally NOT focused on policy and instead just spend a lot of their time tweeting Trump-hagiographic nonsense that is of no substance but gets a lot of likes. If McCarthy is going to signal the GOP needs to be focused on policy, well, Cheney is!

The principal reason that up until yesterday, when Cheney went ahead with the WaPo oped, we were hearing about Trump from Cheney was McCarthy kept saying stuff in TV interviews that then made it impossible for her to not be asked her views given his comments.

If he doesn’t like her talking about Trump, he needs to give answers in interviews that don’t beg further questions from a highly visible, bookabke member of leadership whose views are always going to be sought out by media because she gets more attention than, say, Scalise

It really is that simple. But McCarthy hasn’t been well-scripted or well-prepped of late. I empathize. It’s tough to know what to say to sound sane while not pissing off Trump. But him erring too far on the “don’t piss Trump off” side is how we got here.