Why The RNC Is Obsessed With Liz Cheney

Plus: Will Saletan's debut in the Bulwark

(Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

ICYMI: Over the weekend, I wrote a column about the RNC’s blundering censure of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. You can read the whole thing here, but one of the great things about having a daily newsletter is that I can revise and extend my remarks.

So here is a mildly annotated version of the piece. This is how it opens:

Liz Cheney, it turns out, matters after all.

Otherwise, why would the Republican National Committee have engaged in such an extraordinary display of self-humiliation on Friday?*

*[Note]: When I wrote that I was thinking about an exchange I had recently with Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review. During our discussion, he said of Cheney: “I admire her integrity. She is a woman of principle. And she’s headed on a one-way road to a CNN contract. And that’s a price she’s willing to pay, and I respect that. But I’m not sure in terms of getting the Republican Party in a better place, whether that course actually helps.”

She had, in other words, committed the cardinal sin of becoming irrelevant. Well, Rich, apparently not so much.

Later in the piece, I addressed what I think is the key question: