When the House Intelligence Committee hearings on the Ukraine scandal were underway, there was plenty of grandstanding from Republicans trying to deflect and distract. One of the Republicans that popped up, and popped off, was upstate New York Congresscritter Elise Stefanik. For a party with serious problems with female voters, the Republicans gave Stefanik, the sole Republican female member of the Committee, the spotlight to vigorously defend the party's Dear Leader and to try to bait Chairman Adam Schiff into various procedural fights, apparently hoping that they could later object to the treatment of their female member. She even earned a nickname, "Trashy Stefanik," from conservative attorney George Conway, the long-suffering husband of Trumpist Kellyanne.
Now that Stefanik has been back to her home district after her performance, the congresswoman is fending off questions about how her once moderate conservative image squares with her strong defense of sociopath and sexual abuser Donald "P*ssygrabber" Trump in the hearing.
"For people who’d watched Stefanik’s political rise, her combativeness came as a surprise, a sharp pivot from her understated demeanor in most public appearances (and, according to reporting, very different from her own behavior in impeachment proceedings without network cameras present). To hear pundits tell it, she had transformed overnight from one of the most moderate Republicans in Congress and a young, fresh-faced symbol of a new GOP to President Donald Trump’s attack dog and a symbol of the party’s most retrograde and divisive tendencies."In response, she claims she's always asked "good questions" in hearings, something that might surprise even her Republican colleagues. Her likely opponent in 2020, Dem Tedra Cobb, raised a cool $1 million in just three days after her hearing histrionics. Although the Republicans enjoy support in her district, the district is known to shift back and forth with Stefanik's predecessor being a Dem.
It wouldn't surprise us if the Republicans groomed Stefanik to be a future Senate candidate in New York. She's shown she's as good an obfuscater and loyal Trumpist as any of them, and male Republicans have never shied away from hiding behind the rare skirt on their side.
