House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s leadership is lacking in a Republican Party in which grievance and an eternal culture war has replaced genuine policy and responsible governance, according to an outspoken “Never Trumper” Republican congressman.

Under the leadership of McCarthy (R-Calif), House Republicans are preparing to vote to remove Rep Liz Cheney (R-Wyo) as the No. 3 official in House GOP.

Objections to Cheney — a loyal conservative — center around her decision to vote to impeach Donald Trump for his role in inciting the January 6 Capitol insurrection, as well as the fact that she refuses to support Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

Republicans plan, instead, to install Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) in her place.

Rep Adam Kinzinger, a anti-Trump Republican from Illinois, laid blame at McCarthy’s feet for poor leadership.

“I don’t consider him to be speaking on behalf of the Republican Party anymore because he gave his voting card — gave us proxy card — to Donald Trump. So, do I think it can be saved? Yeah, but I think that’s gonna happen by, frankly, me and my colleagues — kind of like from the grassroots –changing this,” Kinzinger said of the GOP. “Look, it’s interesting because I actually thought the person that should have their leadership challenged was Kevin McCarthy after January 6, because that’s why this all happened. And the Freedom Club and, you know, some of those folks went on offense against Liz. It was probably a really brilliant strategic play because all of a sudden she’s on the defense.

“And to her credit and to others’ credit, I was considering, you know, having a vote of no confidence against Kevin and our feeling was, ‘No, let’s just — let’s move on, you know, we’re gonna vote to impeach the president. We need to move on.’ And then it was them that came back after Liz, not because Liz is any real threat to them except to make them feel uncomfortable,” Kinzinger added.

Republican leaders have shifted from real policy, to wedge culture war issues because they’re easy to motivate the base, Kinzinger said.

“What I think has happened in the Republican Party is policy has been replaced by personal grievance and by culture war. And culture war is really motivating, right? When you get angry about the ‘woke-ism,’ you get angry about cancel culture, you get angry about, you know, what they’re teaching in schools and all this kind of stuff, it really can overtake you that all you want to do is just destroy the other side of the aisle,” he said. “And that’s what the problem is, is leaders for the last 10 years have learned that fear and conspiracy drives profits, and it drives votes. Fear is the most compelling human emotion.”

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