Sometimes the headlines just write themselves, folks. House Republicans are about to joyfully embrace the "cancel culture" they routinely decry, by forcing Representative Liz Cheney out of her leadership position. Cheney keeps saying things they don't like (such as the incontrovertible fact that the 2020 election was safe and secure and that Donald Trump lost, for instance), so they are going to try to squelch the power of her voice by kicking her out. The Republican journey from selling themselves as the "party of personal responsibility" to the party of endless victimhood is now complete.

Since the Republicans are now rebranding themselves as the Big Lie Party, they are of course using another lie (big or small, take your pick) to oust Cheney. According to them, Cheney keeps "living in the past" or "bringing up the past" instead of properly concentrating on the future (the 2022 midterm election) and selling the party brand to the voters. The problem with this construct is that the entire fight is about the past, not the present or the future. It is Trump who refuses to let go of redefining the party around his Big Lie. It is Trump who refuses to even engage Joe Biden and his policies. It is Trump who keeps bringing it up -- Cheney is merely reacting to him when he does. This is not about the future, it is about the party's willingness to redefine its core ideology to "the election was stolen, Trump really won." That's really it. That's all they've got left, other than "rich people should pay no taxes at all." That is all that is left in the Republican ideology cupboard.

Anyone who refuses to at least give half-hearted support to the Big Lie, or who (gasp!) dare to refute it with the truth will no longer be considered party members in good standing. Almost all the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump are being censured by their home state's Republican Party or even being asked to resign. The party machinery, right down to the lowest levels, is obsessed with the Big Lie because Trump keeps telling them it's the only thing that matters.

This is not just some intraparty feud that Democrats can sit back and eat popcorn to, though. Belief in the Big Lie is the sole driving force behind every single "election integrity" law being passed with the express intent of Republicans stealing future elections when they don't like the results. Or suppressing votes from people who vote against them. Or allowing "elections observers" to cause all kinds of trouble at polling places. It is all driven by the Big Lie -- that somehow something was wrong with the 2020 election (even though it was the safest and most secure in all of American history), which obviously requires "fixing" the "problems." By attempting to make it as hard as possible for Democrats to vote, and then making it a whole lot easier for Republicans to challenge or overturn the results after the election.

That is what the Big Lie Party has made its top priority in 2021. It is such a core issue that people like Liz Cheney who stand up and say: "but the emperor's actually naked as a jaybird!" simply cannot be tolerated. And it's really the only policy issue that Republicans can even agree upon anymore. Theoretically, Donald Trump somehow magically transformed the party into a populist party -- which is just downright laughable, at least to me. Oh, sure, some elements of historical populism were present (fear/hatred of minorities and immigrants, nationalism and protectionism), but certainly not the economic parts. Trump talked a good line on how tough he supposedly was going to be on rich people and Wall Street and big businesses, but he didn't deliver on any of it. Instead, he signed a tax cut that handed them all a gigantic gift-wrapped mountain of money. Now, other Republicans are somehow supposed to be populist? That's a joke, too.

Take a look at the competing infrastructure bids currently on the table. Joe Biden's offer was to spend over two trillion dollars and to pay for it by raising the corporate tax rate half as much as it dropped under the Trump tax cut. The Republicans countered with less than 600 billion dollars, paid for by smoke and mirrors. The only thing Republicans were even considering was to somehow raise money through "user fees," but the only one they mentioned was taxing drivers of electric cars (an easy target, since most are pretty liberal, one would assume). That wouldn't raise nearly enough, so Mitch McConnell today let the cat out of the bag -- they're going to suggest raising the gas tax.

So who is the populist here? The party that says corporate America should pay its fair share, or the party that wants the most regressive tax possible -- one that will hit every American family that drives, every time, at the gas pump. Republicans are just never suddenly going to see the light of economic populism, which is a fact more Democrats should be forcefully pointing out more often. Trump's supposed populism was just another Big Lie that really should be exposed.

But it's a lot less toxic than "Biden stole the election." That's the more important issue, and that's why Liz Cheney is about to lose her leadership post. The Republican Party is officially going on the record that there will be no tolerance for truth-tellers among their ranks, for the foreseeable future.

A long, long time ago (three or four presidents ago) the Republican Party made a lot of political hay over Democrats and liberals not being for "personal responsibility." Actions mattered, they sanctimoniously told us, whether the subject under discussion was "people who get AIDS deserve it" or "Bill Clinton needs to be impeached for his sex crimes against humanity" or "no amount of prison time is too much for marijuana dealers." There should be stiff consequences for wrongdoing, period. Republicans also maligned liberals for "playing the victim card," whether that card was "the race card" or "the gender card" or "class warfare" or any other position they didn't approve of. Things had always been a certain way, and if some people were still oppressed, well then, they obviously hadn't properly pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, the way good, Horatio Alger Americans should. Republicans darkly warned against all this "victim culture" as some sort of sign of moral failure. Later this morphed into ridiculing liberal "snowflakes" for being too quick to claim such victimhood.

Now look at them. Republicans invented the term "cancel culture" because they did not appreciate being informed that racist/sexist/misogynistic/etc. views were not going to be tolerated any more by society at large. This infuriates them, but it is really a repudiation of their former fealty to "personal responsibility." Now, conservatives are supposed to face absolutely no responsibility at all for anything they say or do, period. Because they are the victims, here -- another repudiation of a long-held Republican bugaboo.

Liz Cheney is about to be cancelled by her fellow Republicans. The sin she has to pay for is standing up for the truth and calling the Big Lie a Big Lie. Because the emperor's clothes are just gorgeous and nobody better say anything to the contrary. That's how low the Big Lie Party has now sunk.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant