Liz Cheney: A surprising Senate challenge

last updated 8 January 2015

Darth Vader has a daughter, and she’s running for the Senate, said Michelle Cottle in TheDailyBeast.com.Liz Cheney, the offspring of “bloodthirsty overlord” and former vice president Dick Cheney, announced last week that she will mount a primary challenge to fellow Republican Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming in next year’s primary. Enzi is one of the most conservative members of the Senate—anti-abortion, pro-gun, and anti–gay marriage. But that still puts him to the left of Liz, a “woman who remains 100 percent convinced that her dad was 100 percent right 100 percent of the time.” Invading Iraq? Great idea. Torture? A no-brainer. Is Obama a terrorist-appeasing wimp who’s betrayed his own country? Right-o. Liz’s attacks on Obama, and anyone who disagrees with her neocon views, have been so unhinged that many Republicans are expressing open horror that she’s running. “It’s a disaster,” said former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson.

Quite the opposite, said Jonathan S. Tobin in CommentaryMagazine.com. Enzi’s a tired member of the Republican Old Guard—“a lackluster 69-year-old who has been occupying the seat for three terms without exactly covering himself with glory.” If he disappeared from the Senate, no one would even notice. Cheney, meanwhile, “is widely acknowledged to be one of the party’s brightest stars.” Enzi’s big flaw is that he’s too chummy with Republican leaders like Sen. Mitch McConnell, said Erick Erickson in RedState.com.As a result, he supports the farm bill, the post office bailout, and other big-spending measures favored by the GOP establishment. We need more combative figures like Sen. Ted Cruz, who use their visibility to “put points on the board for conservatives.” Liz Cheney has the same kind of guts.

Wyoming Republicans don’t share that enthusiasm, said Peter Grier in CSMonitor.com. In the first poll of likely primary voters, Enzi walloped Cheney 55–21. She’s being seen for the carpetbagger she is: Though born in Wisconsin, Cheney has spent most of her adult life in Washington, D.C., and suburban Virginia, and only bought a house in touristy Jackson Hole last year. Democrats, however, are very supportive of Cheney’s decision to run, said Gail Collins in The New York Times. “Nothing makes the Democrats happier than seeing the opposition torn apart by a primary featuring scary, right-wing candidates.” It’s even better if the scary candidate’s name is Cheney, and her seething belligerence reminds “the nation of how we came to have a war in Iraq.”