| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. What is Liz Cheney's end game? The House Republican Caucus chair appears to be on her way to being ousted in the middle of the session, a very unusual rebuke, and she is not going out quietly. She has a column in the Washington Post making her position clear: "The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution. … The question before us now is whether we will join Trump's crusade to delegitimize and undo the legal outcome of the 2020 election, with all the consequences that might have." House Republicans, given that choice, appear unlikely to opt for "truth and fidelity to the Constitution." Instead, not only are they intent on dumping Cheney, but they will probably replace the Wyoming veteran with Elise Stefanik of New York, a member who hasn't been particularly loyal to the party's legislative agenda but has been eager to push nonsensical stories of electoral fraud. It's certainly possible that, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Ramesh Ponnuru argues, most Republicans just want to duck the entire issue. But when push comes to shove — and both sides, Cheney and her radical opponents, are forcing the issue — it appears that they're going to side with the radicals. Maybe that's because they're either afraid of former President Donald Trump, or actually want Trump to lead the party, or don't care about Trump but really want to preserve and enhance the party's ability to overturn future elections by purging those who stood up for the rule of law in 2020. Or maybe they don't care about any of that but are simply following the old strategy of never allowing any distance between themselves and those attempting to set themselves up as True Conservatives. It doesn't matter. The actual effect is to separate the party even further from democracy, the rule of law and honest elections. Which gets back to Cheney. If she believes (as she says) that all of this is at stake, then what is she going to do next? Yes, standing up to Trump and the radicals is admirable. And who knows? Maybe she'll wind up defeating the challenge to her job for a second time. It's possible that the radicals can't count votes. But probably not. This time the rest of the Republican leadership has joined those who would dump her, and it's unlikely they would have done so unless they considered it a done deal. Cheney could attempt to organize a new "Conservative" party. It's highly unlikely that a significant number of her fellow congressional Republicans would be ready to take that jump with her, avoiding Republican primaries in 2022 and (presumably) helping Democrats retain their majorities by splitting the anti-Democratic vote in general elections, all in the (very) longshot hope of either replacing the Republicans eventually, or forcing them to back away from their anti-democratic ideas. That's unlikely — especially assuming that Cheney's fellow outcast, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, has no intention of joining such a venture — but if somehow she was able to recruit a handful of senators and one or two dozen of her fellow members of the House of Representatives, it would certainly have a chance of having some effect. However, Cheney would need to be willing to live with the short-term likelihood of helping the Democrats in order to defeat the current Republican Party, and I suspect neither she nor any of her potential partners would be willing to do that. Nor do I think that any of these hypothetical, and probably nonexistent, Conservative Party senators would be willing to support an exemption from the filibuster for voting rights and democracy-support legislation, the one thing that they could actually accomplish that might make a difference before being (presumably) wiped out in the midterm elections. Other possibilities? Crossing the aisle to caucus with the Democrats simply isn't a viable option for Cheney, who is way too far philosophically from that party on everything other than democracy support to be a plausible fit. Besides, one defection wouldn't change anything. Equally pointless would be becoming a somewhat better known version of Justin Amash, the former House member from Michigan who left the Republican Party (first becoming an independent, and then a Libertarian) and then retired from his seat. Amash, too, took an admirable stand against Trumpism, but not a particularly effective one. Staying a Republican and writing tough op-eds until she's defeated in a primary? Yeah. In other words, unless she finds a way to organize something that would make a difference, Cheney is probably headed for writing a book that won't change any minds and a think-tank position that won't make the Republican Party any less authoritarian-friendly. But perhaps she'll prove me wrong. 1. Carie Steele at the Monkey Cage on waiving patents on coronavirus vaccines. 2. Dan Drezner on global supply chains. 3. Michael Tesler on Republican voters and the economy. 4. Matt Grossmann talks with Carlos Algara and Adam Cayton about representation, voters, and Congress. 5. The Center for Women and Politics talks with Mirya Holman about women in local government. 6. And my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Conor Sen on the next phase of the economic recovery. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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