Some old and new faces emerging as the future of the Republican Party
Illustration: Stav Golan
The story of Liz Cheney and Elise Stefanik is in many ways symbolic of how the Republican Party has changed in the past six years, with Donald Trump remaking the party in his own image. The vast majority of Never Trump Republicans were forced to retire in 2018 and 2020 to avoid primary defeats, and aside from a few stubborn holdouts such as Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, the movement has effectively ceased to exist. And even if a small core of Trump critics remains, it’s clearly a vanishing minority and not the future of the party.
When one considers the changes the Republican Party has been undergoing for the past two years, one of the first names that comes to mind is that of Elise Stefanik. She was the youngest woman ever elected to Congress in 2014, and last year, she replaced Liz Cheney as the House Republicans’ number three after the latter voted to impeach Trump.
Stefanik, a 37-year-old former Bush administration official and Harvard graduate representing upstate New York, earned a high score for bipartisan cooperation in her first years in Congress, and only an average rating from the American Conservative Union. In other words, she preferred finding common ground to partisan combat. For example, she criticized Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, calling it a mistake, and joined the bipartisan climate solutions caucus. Yet after the 2020 election, she came to Trump’s defense and claimed that he lost due to voter fraud.
She’s considered a rising star in the party, and with polls predicting that Republicans will win the midterm elections and take control of the House of Representatives, she’s poised to hold a position of real influence. If Kevin McCarthy becomes House Speaker and Steve Scalise becomes majority leader, Stefanik will be the Republican whip.
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