Rep. Elise Stefanik’s first big interviews since announcing her challenge to Rep. Liz Cheney for a top Republican leadership role, and those interviews said everything about how Stefanik is positioning herself. First of all, she did not go on CBS or CNN or even Fox News. She went on former Trump-whisperer Steve Bannon’s podcast and talked to former Trump official Sebastian Gorka. Talk about sending up a “this is who I am” flare.

On Bannon’s podcast, Stefanik hugged Donald Trump as tight as she possibly could, saying “My vision is to run with support from the president [Trump] and his coalition of voters, which was the highest number of votes ever won by a Republican nominee.” She even described Trump—who she repeatedly called “the president”—as the “strongest supporter of any president when it comes to standing up for the Constitution.”

To further show her fealty to Trump, Stefanik went in on the fake “audit” of the 2020 election being held in Arizona. While Cheney is being ejected from House Republican leadership for insisting that the 2020 election was valid and that Republicans must honor that and the results of future elections, Stefanik embraced the partisan dumpster fire that is that ongoing count aimed at undermining the actual vote in Arizona. The fauxdit is “incredibly important,” Stefanik insisted. 

Discussing a procedure being carried out by a partisan firm that has gone to court to keep its methods secret and has several documented departures from the state’s elections guidelines and breakdowns in security, Stefanik said, “We want transparency and answers for the American people.”

”What are the Democrats so afraid of?” she asked. Gee, I dunno, the fact that a firm led by a Trumpist conspiracy theorist is carrying out what one elections expert called “just a fishing expedition by people who are determined to find something wrong,” in service of the months-long whines of a sore loser who has already incited a deadly insurrection that overran the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent the certification of the election?

In another strong sign of the Republican Party’s direction, the woman who is, as one of Cheney’s deputies described it, getting a “coronation” from House Republicans actually has a much less conservative voting record than the woman she is expected to replace. The Club for Growth, for instance, ranks Stefanik among the five House Republicans with the worst records by its execrable standards. But she has been unwaveringly loyal to Trump since she decided that he was her best path to advancement, and that is what matters—is all that matters—to Republicans. Given the choice between a hard-right lawmaker who is willing to criticize Trump in defense of democracy and the Constitution, or a historically more-centrist lawmaker who is all about Trump and ready to promote his Big Lie, today’s Republicans will go with the latter, no question.