A book out earlier this year identifies what the authors describe as a civil war within the Republican Party. They look specifically to Wyoming to consider what former Congresswoman Liz Cheney’s career and eventual ousting can tell us about a divided right.
Stephanie Muravchik is one of the authors of the book, “The Republican Civil War: What Liz Cheney’s Wyoming Tells Us About a Divided Right.” She spoke with Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards.
Editor’s Note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Melodie Edwards: Can you talk about what you mean by a Republican civil war?
Stephanie Muravchik: Trump, when he emerged on the scene, was, of course, not the choice of the Republican elite, of the party leaders and most of the movers and shakers in the party. But he turned out to be very much the preference of the primary voters in the party.
There was this split that emerged as people tried to push back against him within the party. This was nowhere more intensely dramatized as it was in Wyoming with Liz Cheney.
ME: Why do you feel like this phenomenon of a Republican civil war has been overlooked nationally?
SM: There was a critique made, certainly by scholars and careful observers that were on the left or liberal or centrist, that faulted GOP elites for not fighting harder.
What we found that I thought was so fascinating once we really dove into the Wyoming story was that most critics were just looking at the national level. They were just looking at The New York Times level, and they weren't really looking down at the state level or the local level. But when you did look down at that level, there was much more resistance and infighting. There was pushback, and, in fact, there was some real counter-mobilization that had had some real success.
Soon after the book came out, it looked like the success had been short-lived. But in this most recent election season, we see that the resistance within the GOP is far from dead. I don't think the resistance looked like what critics thought it would look like. So Wyoming is just a really beautiful case study of that battle.
ME: You mentioned that these civil wars are not just something that is happening in red states like Wyoming, but are also happening in blue communities as well. Can you talk about what the difference is between these civil wars in blue and red communities?
SM: We have a previous book that this “Republican Civil War” is sort of a sequel to called “Trump's Democrats.” There, we went into three blue communities in Rhode Island, Iowa and Kentucky, Democratic strongholds that had been very resistant to Republican candidates and then flipped for Trump in 2016. What is similar, I think, is how important class is and the diploma divide.
What we saw when we looked at Wyoming was this really interesting division between the older Republican Party, sometimes called the Old Guard, and the newer Republican Party, sometimes called the New Guard, and by the people involved themselves. When we first went in, I was looking for ideological differences, but quickly discovered there really wasn't any, just as there really wasn't much ideological daylight between what Trump was offering in his first administration and Rep. Cheney. She was one of the most consistent voters with the administration.
It really wasn't about divergence of positions on the big issues. Instead, it was something almost deeper, which was about an orientation toward politics. Was politics fundamentally about practical governance? Or was it [an] identity and expression that the Old Guard tended to be more oriented toward or come from places like Cheyenne and Casper? The New Guard tended to be much more from the rural counties.
What they shared with the Democrats that Trump so successfully pulled in starting in 2016, which was a more working-class identity and seeing this as very distinct and opposed to the professional class, sometimes called the professional managerial elite or between working class and elites.
ME: In the last election, we saw the Freedom Caucus, which is another name for this new Republican guard that you have been describing, we saw them take the majority in the House, and then we saw them in this last primary in August lose that majority. Through the lens of what you learned when you came to Wyoming, how can you explain that in terms of this civil war?
SM: One issue is this really impressive counter-mobilization by people who dislike not some of the basic policy and ideology, but the tone. One thing that I heard a lot of was how small the Republican Party had gotten, how small the state conventions had gotten. They seemed to have dropped precipitously, partly because there were actually whole delegations that were getting purged. But there was a kind of wistful feeling. People said it used to feel like a family gathering, like a reunion. There was such a nice feeling of camaraderie and fun, whereas it had gotten very small and exclusive.
ME: We have a general election coming up in November. Why should people pay attention to a general election in the state of Wyoming anymore?
SE: One issue that both parties are facing is that the moderates in their parties, due to the effects of polarization, tend to support whomever the party candidate is. It's a way of inflating the power of the fringes, whether or not Democratic voters really want DSA-style [Democratic Socialists of America] candidates and whether or not Republican voters really want Freedom Caucus candidates.
I think I would be looking at what the tallies are. I would be curious: Do you see any erosion because, for example, moderates won so many of the races? Does this keep some more moderate Republicans from straying, and does it pull in independents?
I had just detailed all this counter-mobilization by the more traditional Republican Party that had had the virtues of a kind of public spiritedness, and I had been documenting this group, and then it seemed like they had just lost everything. So it's exciting now to be able to talk to you at this moment when it seems like – I wouldn't make predictions – but they're clearly very much a viable and vital part of Wyoming politics. It's better when one faction doesn't come to completely dominate because they both represent some aspect of Wyoming voters and what voters want to see.
