In tomorrow’s NY Times, a story from Jonathan Martin, formerly of Politico, about a possible Liz Cheney run for Senate in Wyoming in 2014 primarying Mike Enzi.
Considering that in 2012 Mitt Romney got 69% of the vote, and John Barrasso got 75%, it seems like a safe Republican seat no matter who wins the primary.
But it is causing fear and loathing, In Wyoming, A Cheney Run Worries G.O.P.:
But Ms. Cheney’s move threatens to start a civil war within the state’s Republican establishment, despite the reverence many hold for her family.
Mr. Enzi, 69, says he is not ready to retire, and many Republicans say he has done nothing to deserve being turned out.
It would bring about “the destruction of the Republican Party of Wyoming if she decides to run and he runs, too,” Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from the state, said in an interview last week. “It’s a disaster — a divisive, ugly situation — and all it does is open the door for the Democrats for 20 years.”
I have nothing against Enzi; I know little about him. But I don’t like the sense of entitlement being shown by Alan Simpson and others.
If Enzi deserves to be reelected, he should earn it. No free rides from now on.
Maybe the Wyoming Republican Party needs a little shaking up.
Run, Liz, Run.
Update:
Just asked Club 4 Growth about @jmartNYT's Enzi vs Cheney piece. They declined to comment… If she runs, she'll need help of similar groups
— Robert Costa (@costareports) July 7, 2013
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
If he has held his seat for 2 terms or more it is time to replace him, end of story.
Horse feathers. Cheney not only deserves name recognition; she’s the daughter who stepped out of her dad’s shadow. I’m glad she’s making this run.
I have no sympathy for media types who spin like crazy. Hope they don’t get to influence voters.
PLUS, according to Meredity Whitney’s Fate of the States, there are two wonderful examples of states that have been “prodent.” And, fiscally better than just “responsible.” Wyoming. And, North Dakota. Figured out how to stay out of debt. As well as now attracting businesses from other states. Creating jobs among affordable houses.
“Go for it, girl.”
folks that attack ms Cheney with political spin should be wary. if they go too hard in that manner it will appear as though they are attacking women in general. it will be interesting to see if the media follows the Sarah Palin template in their attempts to discredit.
“Republicans say he has done nothing … to deserve being turned out.”
It seems the first response should be all he has accomplished, not that he is not ready to retire, and has been an acceptable bump on the log.
Bring in some new blood now … Liz has depth and would bring vibrancy.
I love this story!
Linked, William: ‘Liz Cheney Looking to Challenge Mike Enzi for Wyoming Senate’.
You never know for sure, but she is one of the 1% that seems worthy of trust, based on what she says and has done, and based on the fact that she seems perfectly aligned with her father ideologically.
My position on Republican plutocrats like Enzi is that if they aren’t in the lead with Cruz, Paul, Johnson, Palin and a handful of others, than they are part of the problem. Good riddance.
This country is two steps past the brink of disaster. Something has to be done, and this Enzi guy is a hiding in the shadows. Out with all of them like him. If it destroys the Republican Party, so what? The Republican party has rolled over since 1988. If any Republican isn’t shouting from the rooftop and fighting tooth and claw against the faction so perfectly represented by the most dangerous man in US history, then that Republican is useless.
If Ms. Cheney is the real deal, I wouldn’t be surprised if Palin helps.
She may have to reach out to The Guv. Her dad hasn’t been exactly complimentary to Palin, if I remember rightly.
The NY Times has always been a great source of quality political advice for Republicans. Especially Republicans in Wyoming where the NY Times has the advantage of several in house specialists who can 1) find Wyoming on the map and, 2) who know how to spell the state capitol.
Remember, the NYT liked John McCain in the ’08 primaries. Fat lot of good that did him, or us…
[…] Legal Insurrection: Run Liz Run […]
Seems to be a common tactic from an entrenched moderate. “Don’t you dare Primary me or I’ll throw so much crap and personal attacks at my opponent they’ll never survive the general election (during which I will continue to fight them), and then I’ll blame the whole thing on you!”
“Don’t you dare Primary me or I’ll throw so much crap and personal attacks at my opponent they’ll never survive the general election (during which I will continue to fight them), and then I’ll blame the whole thing on you!”
We call this the “Richard Lugar” strategy….
Anyone who wants to runs should run. Let the voters have a choice. Both parties have enough of a strangle hold on voter choices. Enough of this party garbage.
Senator Enzi should do the smart thing and plan to drop. He can hand his legacy to Ms. Cheney.
If he does that, and spends some time in the remaining part of his term helping Senators Cruz, Paul, etc., then in 2016 there will be gratitude for him from the Pub faithful. A Pub president (should that happen) will place Mr. Enzi into a new high position. Interior? Commerce? Ambassador? All possible.
But if he fights Cheney and loses, and then gets all pissy about it, then he’ll end up with nothing.
If for no other reason, and there are plenty, if Alan Simpson is opposed to Liz Cheney’s candidacy, I’m for it. Why is it that most of our strongest spokesmen are women? My third and final point/question is who gives a rip if Mr. Enzi is not yet ready to retire? Of course he has the right to reach that conclusion on his own but so do Republicans in Wyoming. It’s called a “primary”.
At least she won’t have to move – she already lives in bucolic DCVirginia & is DC establishment.
What exactly are her qualifications to be a senator for Wyoming ? I think pics of rodeos & her DC daughter lecturing Wyoming boys at their OWN under 12 state function are not enough.
I see like her father she goes on about brave soldiers & the current uber faves SEALS. However I see no military service in her family. She could have enlisted in something – or what about hubby ? Ibet you 100 bucks none of her precious children will be signing on.
No no Cheneys just send thousands to their deaths so she can tweet about it.
Every candidate for office needs to be primaried every time. The concept of a person having a safe seat, especially for Congress, should be beyond the pale. If our national tradition were to have persons anointed to office, then perhaps Senator Simpson’s comments would be appropriate. However, that is not our tradition nor our practice. Competition makes for stronger elected officials at every level.
Screw Simpson and his Old Boy entitlement attitude. I used to think he was a conservative; he has proven me wrong.
Who is Enzi? I have never heard him step up to the plate on any issue. I have heard Ms Cheney, and I liked what I heard.
Go for it Liz. Wish I were in Wyoming,for a number of reasons, but, one is so I could vote for you.
I agree wholeheartedly that Simpson’s endorsement is a major negative for Enzi. That’s Simpson as in Simpson-Mazzoli, the Amnesty Act in 1986. He’s still selling us out.
Li’s first anti Reagan.
Wonder when Simpson is up for reelection — he needs to be primaried also; he’s been around way too long.
If I lived in Wyoming, I’d work to elect her. She’s brilliant and tough as nails.
This reminded me of this Jazz Shaw post about Enzi at Hot Air:
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/04/13/video-a-few-moments-with-sen-mike-enzi/
While not my idea of a “perfect conservative”, I’ve always felt Dick Cheney and his family were a set of very classy people.
Kind of typical of the people of the Intermountain West.
I would love to see Ms. Cheney run. I’d vote for her several times from Texas. Or I’d send her money. Whichever…
Enzi’s an old white guy, while Liz Cheney is Cherokee, so this is a great way to update the GOP and get a formidable conservative spokeswoman in the US Senate.
Kos, baby, Turkey is an Arab country? I learn something new every day!
Anything we can do to destroy the Republican Party as it is now is a-ok with me.
Enzi voted against gun control and Amnesty. His “Conservative Action Score is 81%; Liberal Action Score is 0%.
I have been a huge Liz Cheney admirer for many years. I’d rather see her as VP, but it would be great to see her in Congress too.
I don’t see a lot of upside to this. Splitting up solid conservatives in a little tribal war does not sound wise or appealing. When we have so few principled friends does knifing one in the back make sense?
Not an easy choice imo. But I sure do love Liz.
Such low horizons Mav.
Why not Liz for President & John E Bush for VP .
Come on ,mix it up a bit.
Then after 2 lackluster terms, he should GTFO and make way for the next generation.
We need more than a “reliable vote”. We need more senators like Cruz and Paul and I think that Liz Chaney could be that senator.
If you are not part of the solution, then you are a problem.
I do not know Liz enough, nor the incumbent… but if you are not fighting Immigration Amnesty, if you are not fighting debt ceiling cap increases, if you are not fighting enough to make Pelosi puke at the mention of your name, then you deserve to fight for your position, and hard.
Enzi is the guy who worked on taxing internet sales for the last 20 years. That seems like it should be plenty to primary him on.
I don’t vote in Wyoming so it really doesn’t make any difference to me, but this idea that politicians have some kind of possessory interest in a political office is bullsh*t.
That seat belongs to the voters of Wyoming.
As AngelaTC mentions above, Enzi has been one of the leading Republican proponents of taxing internet sales since he’s been in Congress. He subscribes to the view that you “treat all companies the same” by giving some services and others none, but taxing them all.
I think it is GREAT he isn’t ready to retire at 69. There’s a great big ol’ world o’ opportunity out here, he can start a business and see how all the laws and regulations he’s helped foist on the country work in practice. Or if that’s too much, Wal-Mart is always looking for greeters with people skills.
Liz Cheney is absolutely the real deal. She is smart, eloquent, quick on her feet, and the offspring of two proven executives.
This is the sort of case where there really isn’t a downside to challenging the incumbent in the primary. Simpson thinks it will give the state to the Democrats for 20 years? How long has it been since he’s visited?
Nice to see Dick with so many fans here.
He be lookin for a new heart maybe li could have a sidebar where people could put their name down
Take mine Dick – I don’t need it .
Been there, done that.
New heart doing very well.
DO try to keep up. There’s a good lad…
He be looking for a new heart. This one won’t last long. If he was smarter he could have ripped one out of some poor dying 19 year soldier But that would have meant he would have had to venture into deadly war zones.
The big fat coward not do dat.
As a veteran I find that the people who call the Dick Cheney’s of the world cowards are usually cowards themselves.
With Dick you’d get a complete answer with multiple layers of understanding, giving reasons for every detail.
With Barack I always feel he is struggling to understand the question, he usually needs a prompter, and has to give broad sweeping answers that devolve to talking points that blame Bush. Then he blames the “dangerous” Tea party for stopping him from fixing everything. And he lies constantly.
As much as I love Palin, we really need deep thinking policy people in charge. That takes years of being “in the thick of it”. Of course Palin was ahead of Obama, had executive experience, gave a better answer than jerk Gibson on the Bush Doctrine, and beat Biden in debate.
But Democrats thrive on propaganda because they have full media/Hollywood support. Conservatives require an ability to adroitly handle media bias (as Liz did in that second video above), where networks set up a three on one “debate”. Cruz can do that fairly well too.
Palin is awesome in her role … helped get us Cruz, and she had a good candidate in Missouri, (but Huckabee’s “pasty old white guy” snuck in there). We need fully capable candidates that have experience “prosecuting” their case against the left’s internal army, able to dismantle histrionic argument like O’Mara has had to do.
As much as I love Palin, we really need deep thinking policy people in charge. That takes years of being “in the thick of it”
Deep thinkin, pipe smoking, checker pants wearin, DC beltway livin, RINO thinkin in the “thick of it”.
Yeahhhh….surrrrre. Take a look around boys and girls on what those “book smart” folks are doin to the US.
Well there are those … but strong defense is part of what our DC guys are supposed to do, though not just for the enrichment of the weapons providers.
But being a “lightweight” only works if you’re a Barack type, promising rainbows, with pots of gold redistribution.
Is there such a thing as a somewhat hawkish tea party type? I think surrendering our world leadership is not necessary, nor good for us in the long run. Maybe we can get more pragmatic leadership that can both decentralize and keep US strong.
But this all has to be fleshed out in open forums … Dick’s daughters don’t necessarily follow right in his footsteps. 🙂
Let the Republican Party in Wyoming have a Primary debate between the two. Isn’t that what elections are supposed to be about? Let the best (wo)man win.
[…] via Legal Insurrection | Liz Cheney for Senate | Mike Enzi | 2014 Election. Anything that pisses off the Establishment RINO crowd pretty much energizes me these days. The worst thing they can do in my opinion to engender a Liz Cheney run is to be preemptively poo poo’ing a Liz Cheney run. If her supporters in Wyoming are anything like me then that will just get them on board faster. […]
I wonder how many people commenting here are Wyomingites. I’m a nearly lifelong Wyomingite (except for 7 years during my childhood, which wasn’t my fault). If Ms. Cheney runs, she’s going to have to overcome the “carpetbagger” label which will inevitably be slapped on her. She hasn’t lived or worked in Wyoming as an adult. She didn’t get her education in Wyoming – she graduated from high school in Virginia, got her bachelor’s degree at Colorado College, her JD from the U of Chicago. We Wyomingites don’t cotton much to outsiders, and despite her name and pedigree she is the consummate outsider. She’s going to have to prove to me – and to a lot of my fellow Wyomingites – that she’s “one of us.”
She should have to earn it as well. No free rides for anyone.
[…] Legal Insurrection tells Liz Cheney to run for office […]
Here’s my problem: Liz Cheney lives in and is a resident of Virginia. Period. She is no more a resident of Wyoming than Bob Kerry was of Nebraska, Richard Lugar Indiana, or Bobby Kennedy and Hillary Clinton were of New York. It’s time to dispense with these tortured interpretations of residency. These fictions are stifling local and regional politics, discouraging identification and development of local and regional candidates, enhancing the practice of identifying high profile, national personalities acceptable to a party (D or R), and finding a convenient “residency” to run from. It is entrenching lifer-pols in government and having a direct impact upon voting rights and voting—frequency and location—certainly here in NY and in Florida. (Also see Marsha Coakley race in MA.)
Her motivation is unimportant to me. I believe she’d be good, but not at the cost of diminishing regional politics. We need to dispense with the notion that it is okay to have a national pool of folks who would make a good (choose a position), then look around for a place to “represent” so as to get on a ballot. It may well be that there are more able politicians in Virginia (discussion for another time) than there are in Wyoming, but that doesn’t mean we should push Wyoming’s out of the way to get to Virginia’s.
She may be “from” Wyoming, but she “is” a resident of Virginia. I too know little of Mr. Enzi. He may have my “residency” problem; if he does it should come out. Perhaps there is another deserving candidate in Wyoming we don’t know of. I would like to see Liz Cheney run for office. If it’s a regional office, do it from Virginia.
Problem is Liz Cheney’s not from Wyoming. She’s from the DC area. She didn’t grow up in Wyoming. She didn’t graduate from high school in Wyoming. She didn’t go to college in Wyo. She may have vacationed here with her folks but this would be just as politically based and bad as Hilary representing NY. It defeats the whole idea of no taxation without local representation. Her family lives in the east and her kids go to school there. Let her run for office out there. A true Wyomingite should represent Wyoming.
Her run would be as ludicrous as mine and I grew up in Wyo. I lived down the street from her parents (both sides at different times.) I graduated from the same high school as Dick and Lynn Cheney, but I moved to Colorado 30 years ago and, like Liz, have no right to run for office because Wyoming isn’t my home…although unlike Liz, it was for my early life. I have many Wyoming friends, most are Republicans and they will hate this. This will not sit well as much respect as those in Wyoming might have for her parents, who were from Wyoming (although respect may be lost if Cheneys sanction this misguided carpetbagger run for their east-coast daughter.) My friends and others very well might vote for a fellow Wyoming Dem over someone not from Wyoming.
You make sense, but the Republican voters who are frustrated by a Cheney run don’t have to vote Democrat and they don’t have to stay home.
Wyoming’s electorate has characteristics similar to Alaska: 1) it’s a sparsely populated state; and 3) it’s strongly Republican.
If Cheney were to win the primary, I could see Enzi loyalists resentful of the carpetbagging encourage him to mount a write in campaign and probably split the Republican vote and put a Democrat in the seat. That may be what Simpson was alluding to.
If Cheney runs, she better be sure that she will have the loyalty of enough Republicans that Enzi will not run a write in campaign. That could be disastrous.
Reading that Ms. Cheney has not resided in Wyoming for quite a while, it does make me start to wonder if perhaps she should instead run for the Senate in Virginia.
Mark Warner is up for re-election in 2014. He’s a tough nut to crack, apparently, but Ms. Cheney would win major plaudits in the party if she unhorsed him. That he would be difficult to defeat makes me wonder if Ms. Cheney is indeed contemplating Wyoming because she thinks she could unseat Enzi but not Warner.
If a jump to the Senate in Viriginia in one step is too difficult, she could run for a House seat and then challenge Tim Kaine in 2018.
But perhaps her ambition is on a shorter time line than all this.
Running Cheney against Enzi would be penny wise and pound foolish. Lots of things sound great from a purely ideological, read non-practical, view of the world. But, politics is a combination of ideology and tactics. It is poor tactics to spread resources, e.g., campaign money and grassroots loyalties, between two acceptable candidates if it can be helped. Enzi as an incumbent can win easily, no doubt, and thus the HRCC needs to preserve resources to focus on fighting Lefties. Safe incumbents are net generators of campaign dollars used to fight tough races elsewhere. Taking Enzi off the grid in this capacity for an election cycle makes no sense. Thus the silence from the Club for Growth. Plus, Cheney is clearly a helicoptered in candidate which sends the message that talent is to be cultivated in the big Eastern City versus at home. Bad idea all around for her to engage here. She needs to wait for an opening.
[…] destroying the GOP Like the establishment Republican Party has a great recent track record… Run, Liz Cheney, Run For what it’s worth, I’d endorse her In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A. […]
I don’t like Dick Cheney…(but he’s of course better than the village idiot that’s there now!)
BUT… I LOVE Liz Cheney!. I would definitely be rooting for her should she run, I SOOOOOO hope she does!
Cheney seems to support interventionist policies in regard to national defense. She doesn’t seem to have learned anything from the Iraq/Afghanistan debacles.
I have no idea what her views are on the economy or things like immigration. I can’t see why Republicans would be rushing to support her.
[…] I urged Liz Cheney to run for Senate against Mike Enzi the other night because I didn’t like the sense of entitlement exhibited by his supporters, Run, Liz Cheney, Run. […]
[…] previously wrote about this, Run, Liz Cheney, Run and Our second […]