Jim Banks is the head of the House GOP’s biggest caucus. He’s also earning another unofficial title: shadow chair of the House GOP Conference. Now he’s going after Liz Cheney.
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The Indiana Republican, who’s made no secret of his future leadership ambitions, has used his new platform as chief of the Republican Study Committee to build a messaging operation to compete with that of Rep. Liz Cheney, the House GOP’s current — and embattled — conference chair.
On Banks’ watch, the RSC has begun blasting out weekly newsletters modeled after POLITICO Playbook that try to serve up a buzzy mix of politics, policy and personality. The RSC also regularly compiles talking points for its members that often get leaked to conservative media outlets. Banks crafted his own memo outlining his vision for the GOP’s future that won praise from top Republicans. And the RSC has also helped coordinate media opportunities for its members, with Banks routinely popping up in D.C.-based coverage himself.
Banks’ effort to assemble a rival messaging machine is widely viewed by his colleagues as an audition for Cheney’s job, which governs both communications and member services. That position may be available sooner than he expected: Tensions over Cheney’s outspoken criticism of former President Donald Trump are once again at a boiling point inside the GOP conference, with some senior Republicans predicting she’ll be pushed out of leadership before month’s end.
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Banks, a veteran of the Afghanistan war who has aligned himself closely with Trump, has raised his own profile since taking the reins of the conservative caucus earlier this year. And the media-savvy 41-year-old is making clear that he views his RSC’s communications shop as superior to the conference’s formal, Cheney-led hub. Banks described it as “filling a void.”
And even though Cheney publicly split from most of her party when she voted to impeach Trump, her allies argue that she has continued to succeed in her leadership role by providing the conference with important messaging tools. Under Cheney’s leadership, the GOP conference has sent out messaging emails every morning that Congress has been in session, in addition to a weekly email with shareable social media content focused on hitting the Biden agenda, according to sources who have seen the communications.
