“In the civil war between Donald Trump and the GOP’s waning establishment, no Republican has crossed the former president and come out ahead. Yet as Rep. Liz Cheney’s likely ouster from House leadership lays bare, Trump has reserved a special fury for the scions of the GOP’s leading families in his attempt to exercise full dominion over the Republican Party. Whether it’s the Cheneys, the Bushes or the lesser bloodlines – such as the Romneys or the Murkowskis – Trump has been relentless in his efforts to force them to bend the knee. Even Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Sen. John McCain – who herself has never run for office – has been knocked down, censured by Trump allies who run the state Republican Party in Arizona.”

“It’s the clearest sign that the modern Republican Party hasn’t just broken with its traditionalist past. It’s shredding every vestige of it. ‘It’s a tragedy,’ said Arne Carlson, a former two-term Republican governor of Minnesota. ‘The problem with the revolution is they continue to get more and more extreme. Whereas Liz Cheney was on the right, she now finds herself being pushed into the middle and, ultimately, off the cliff.’ As a prominent link between the old GOP and the new party of Trump, Liz Cheney is more than just another name on Trump’s enemies list. If his supporters in the House ultimately oust the Wyoming Republican from her leadership post, as expected, it will mark the repudiation of decades of Cheney family influence on the Republican party, dating back to her father’s time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, in GOP House leadership and as vice president. Trump’s erasure of the institutions of the pre-Trump GOP was, of course, the promise of his presidency – his anti-establishment fervor a feature of Trumpism, not a bug'” – Politico.