Just thinking about this possibility makes my head spin around on my neck ~ ~ I emphasized/bolded my favorite comment below ~ Sooz

Senator Cheney?
By Steve Benen - Mon Jul 8, 2013 8:37 AM EDT

If we were to make a list of competitive Senate races to watch in 2014, Wyoming wouldn't make the cut. Sen. Mike Enzi is a popular Republican incumbent in a deep-red state -- he won re-election in 2008 with more than 75% of the vote -- and at age 69, the senator is not yet in a position where he needs to think about retirement. Enzi's fourth term looks like one of the cycle's safest bets.

At least, it did. In an era in which even conservative Republican incumbents have to worry about fierce primary challenges, Enzi will apparently have a high-profile foe next year.

A young Dick Cheney began his first campaign for the House in this tiny village [Lusk, Wyoming] -- population 1,600 -- after the state's sole Congressional seat finally opened up. But nowadays, his daughter Liz does not seem inclined to wait patiently for such an opening.

Ms. Cheney, 46, is showing up everywhere in the state, from chicken dinners to cattle growers' meetings, sometimes with her parents in tow. She has made it clear that she wants to run for the Senate seat now held by Michael B. Enzi, a soft-spoken Republican and onetime fly-fishing partner of her father.

It's not just idle speculation. Liz Cheney, despite having no meaningful background in the state whatsoever, moved with her family to Wyoming just last year and quickly became a ubiquitous political player. Indeed, the right-wing media personality even called Enzi directly, letting him know she's likely to run against him in a GOP primary.

The result would probably be an ugly fight within the state Republican Party, pitting a popular three-term incumbent against a powerful family with deep roots in the state.

It's not altogether clear why Cheney would bother. Her brief tenure in public office -- she worked in the Bush/Cheney State Department -- didn't go well, but she remains a fixture in political media, routinely publishing "stark raving mad" pieces and making Sunday show appearances. Cheney's megaphone is formidable, even if she uses it towards ridiculous ends.

But whatever her motivations, this will probably be one of the cycle's more noteworthy primary fights. Enzi, assuming he doesn't retire, would almost certainly have the edge, though he has not yet faced a rival as fierce and unburdened by propriety as Cheney.

On Twitter, ‏@pourmecoffee added, "If 'Liz Cheney' is the answer, the question must be 'How could the U.S. Senate possibly get any worse?'"

Postscript: The NYT piece noted that the former vice president, eager to help his daughter, has also begun traveling more regularly to the state he used to represent. That said, Liz Cheney "has told associates that if she runs, she wants to do so in her own right."

It was the only sentence in the article that literally made me laugh. Cheney wants to run against a popular incumbent from her own party in a state she's lived in for a year, and she thinks her candidacy should be unrelated to her last name? C'mon.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/07/08/19351820-senator-cheney?lite

Buckle up ~ here we go ~ ~ Sooz

Liz Cheney launching Senate campaign in Wyoming
By Steve Benen - Wed Jul 17, 2013 8:34 AM EDT


In recent years, as Republican politics has shifted to the far right, we've seen plenty of primary challenges to sitting GOP officials. In every instance, they follow a fairly predictable pattern: the party base deems a lawmaker to be insufficiently conservative, they're challenged from the right, and more often than not (Lugar, Bennett, Inglis, et al), they lose.

However, there are no recent examples of a Republican eyeing a sitting GOP official and effectively arguing, "I have a famous last name and I want your seat, so get out of my way."

And yet, there's Liz Cheney.

Following up on Rachel's segment from last night's show, the far-right Fox News personality confirmed late yesterday that she will, in fact, launch a campaign against Sen. Mike Enzi (R) in Wyoming, a state Cheney moved to just last year. There's nothing especially wrong with Enzi by Republican standards -- he's a popular incumbent and one of the Senate's most conservative members -- and yesterday, the senator sounded a disappointed note with a phrase that's become an instant classic.


Interestingly enough, Enzi's actual friends have wasted no time rallying to his defense. In fact, it's been interesting to watch just how quickly the party has rushed to dismiss Liz Cheney's candidacy.

Enzi's in-state colleague, Sen. John Barrasso (R), for example, quickly issued a statement saying, "Mike Enzi is a friend, a mentor and a tremendous U.S. senator for Wyoming. I support his re-election." Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), who is rumored to have been interested in Enzi's seat if he retired, quickly noted that Cheney has never earned a paycheck in Wyoming, and has lived her whole life in D.C.'s Virginia suburbs.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) sounded a similar note: "When I heard Liz Cheney was running for Senate I wondered if she was running in her home state of Virginia."

As is the case with all incumbents, the National Republican Senatorial Committee announced its support for Enzi last week, long before Cheney stated her intentions.

But I imagine Cheney will try to use all of this to her advantage, positioning Enzi as the "establishment" candidate, despite the fact that she's spent her life in the Beltway and benefited professionally from her famous family name.

Regardless, the stage is set for one of the cycle's most interesting political dramas. Cheney will officially launch her candidacy in Casper at 10 a.m. local time.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/07/17/19520476-liz-cheney-launching-senate-campaign-in-wyoming?lite

So, will FOX maintain it's "fair-and-balanced image" and dump her?

I'm having a problem envisioning Rand Paul [!!!] as a "savior" ~ but that's the role he just claimed for himself ~ ~ Sooz

Cheney, Paul, and a proxy fight for the GOP
By Steve Benen - Thu Jul 18, 2013 9:44 AM EDT

Far-right media personality Liz Cheney formally kicked off her Republican U.S. Senate campaign in her home state of Virginia Wyoming yesterday, right around the same time the website for her strange D.C. attack operation was scrubbed. At an announcement press conference, Cheney made relatively clear why she's running.


I see. So Liz Cheney, after living inside the Beltway for nearly her entire life, has come to a firm conclusion about the U.S. Senate: there's just not enough obstructionism. Sure, voters elected a Democratic majority in each of the last three cycles, but what Republicans should be doing is refusing to work with the majority. When the parties reach agreement, that means the Senate is governing -- and that's what Cheney is against.

Keep in mind, incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi (R), who thought he was friends with Cheney, has not exactly earned a reputation as Mr. Compromise on Capitol Hill. He's one of the chamber's most far-right members, and when Democrats are looking to find bipartisan solutions with flexible GOP senators open to finding common ground, Enzi isn't at the top of anyone's list.

But for Liz Cheney, the fact that he's open to occasionally working with the majority on policy solutions is simply too much. She's running on an anti-compromise platform.

"Instead of cutting deals with the president's allies in Congress, we can be opposing them every step of the way," she said, adding, "In my view, obstructing President Obama's policies and his agenda isn't actually obstruction; it's patriotism."

Thanks for clearing that up.

In an interesting twist, one Republican senator seems especially eager to defend Enzi and help him win the primary fight. It's not his Wyoming colleague and it's not one of members who's served alongside Enzi for the last two decades -- it's Rand Paul.

There's a larger significance to this that's worth keeping in mind.

Immediately after Cheney made her intentions clear, the Kentucky Republican wasted no time in coming to Enzi's defense, mocking Cheney and embracing the incumbent. "I've told him I'll do anything I can to help him," Paul said of Enzi. "In fact, somebody asked me today if they could use my name, and I said I'd be happy to sign on and do a fundraiser for him."

Is there a deep affection between the two Republican colleagues? To date, Paul and Enzi haven't seemed especially close, though some of their committee assignments overlap. But as Dave Weigel explained in a smart piece last night, the GOP primary in Wyoming is becoming a proxy war for a larger intra-party dispute.


Liz Cheney's ideology mirrors that of her father -- she wrote his memoir, for goodness sake -- and to put it mildly, she embraces a foreign policy vision that is deeply at odds with that of Paul and his libertarian-minded allies. Cheney is eager for more wars, more invasions, more use of military power abroad, and fewer limits on executive power when it comes to national security. Her fealty to neo-conservatism appears to be endless.

Paul, whatever his many other faults might be, has no use for neo-conservatism, and even less use for one of its notable champions joining him in the Senate.

And so, the Kentucky Republican will "do anything" he can to make sure Mike Enzi is re-elected. It'll be interesting enough to see the Republican establishment at odds with itself over this primary fight, but the foreign-policy subtext adds meaningful drama on the future of the party.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/07/18/19540376-cheney-paul-and-a-proxy-fight-for-the-gop?lite