Rising Female Candidates: First As Tragedy…
New York Magazine has a rather interesting article on “How Dick Cheney Plans to Use His Daughter Liz’s Political Future to Ensure His Legacy”:
As early as the 2000 election, Liz was being told by Bush and Cheney advisers like Stuart Stevens that she could be president one day. She laughed it off, but starting last summer, she seemed to draft an informal outline of her future. On an appearance on Fox News in late May, she recalled the coalition that Ronald Reagan built in the late seventies, roping together the Republicans, independents, and centrist Democrats, the “three prongs of the stool he was able to put together as a majority.” With Obama in office, she declared, “it will become possible for us again to build that kind of coalition,” implicitly marking Obama as another Carter.
While Keep America Safe is primarily focused on Gitmo, it is also transparently a testing ground for Liz Cheney’s political career. When she created the pac with Bill Kristol, he advised her to hire two former aides to John McCain’s presidential campaign, including Michael Goldfarb, a 29-year-old political consultant who has become her adviser. Goldfarb, who claims that he was the one to recommend Sarah Palin to Kristol as a national candidate, says they are running Keep America Safe “very much like a campaign.”
“I was excited about Palin; I’m more excited about Liz,” he says. “The same sort of excitement you get when you hear her father, except she’s this petite blonde with five kids … There’s just something about her. You see that response across the activist portion of the party. It’s the response you saw to Palin … She gets people worked up. She connects to people. She is in harmony with where the base seems to be. She’s right on the issues.
“You have a little crush on her,” he gushes. “It’s hard not to.”
Liz will be a speaker at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans this April, along with Sarah Palin. Her advocates say she trumps Palin on substance. “If you put Sarah Palin and Liz Cheney in a circle of 100 journalists, asking anything they wish, I’ll tell you, pal, you don’t need a compass to figure that one out,” says Alan Simpson.
Larry Lindsey, who worked with Liz on Fred Thompson’s failed presidential campaign, suggests Liz trumps her father as well. “I think she’s a better politician than her dad,” he says. “She’s really outgoing, connects with people, very quick with a response, which the vice-president often wasn’t.”
Cheney has already mastered media messaging. Her ambition is most transparent in how carefully she avoids alienating any faction of the conservative movement, including the tea-party wing. On TV, she has danced around fringe issues like Obama’s place of birth, careful not to deny the claim outright, even if it’s clear she doesn’t really believe it. She praised Palin’s book, Going Rogue, even though she didn’t finish it and once called the prospect of a McCain nomination “a sad day for the Republican Party.”
The whole article is well worth reading, although I think the title is (deliberately or not) misleading. In its defense, yeah, Liz obviously owes her interest in the “family business” of politics to her father, whom she apparently adores. On the other hand, mistaking her for Daddy Darth’s sockpuppet—or even just his handmaiden—would seem to undervalue Liz Cheney’s own ambitions. She’s got a lot more in common with Hillary Clinton than with either Dubya Bush (the last national figure who the media chose to present as a dutiful-or-not scion of an inherently politically powerful family) or Sarah Palin (someone who, whatever her intellectual limitations, actually campaigned successfully for political office on her own talents before being ‘uplifted’ by the national party). Cheney is a smart, connected, establishment-friendly policy wonk who’s going to push every misogynist’s alarm buttons… and I don’t think that having spent a lot of time hanging around the West Wing will work any better as a political credential for her than it did for Hillary. But I am very much afraid that we’ll spend the next forty years combatting Liz Cheney as a force for all that is evil in American politics, even if she never holds elective office.
March 14, 2010 6:55 pm
Posted in: Assholes, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
51 Comments
51 Responses
ed - March 14, 2010 | 6:58 pm · Link
Other than being the child of a National Figure, what the fuck does Liz Cheney bring to the table? (Answer: As with George Bush, Jr., fuckall.)
SiubhanDuinne - March 14, 2010 | 7:00 pm · Link
I read that whole piece last night, and was particularly struck (although I guess not completely surprised) that three prominent NBC reporters are Liz’ social friends: David Gregory, Pete Williams, and Mika Brzinzski.
And we wonder why she’s on the teevee so often?
Brian J - March 14, 2010 | 7:04 pm · Link
What’s a plausible path to a nomination for president for her? The House seems too small in scale, and while she could, at least in theory, be a running mate after some unelected role in policy-making (Sec. of Defense in a Palin administration?), I don’t see that happening, either. So it’s either the Senate, or being elected governor, but from what state?
If I had to guess, I’d say she’ll be active in politics, but from behind the scenes. She might not be a kingmaker, but she might be something close to it. And in the end, that’s far more horrifying, because despite the absolute stupidity and/or depravity of their ideas, some conservatives just never, ever go away. Always there, never accountable.
Jim, Foolish Literalist - March 14, 2010 | 7:07 pm · Link
I am not completely without sympathy for Liz and Mary, ‘cause I can’t imagine growing up in a household where Dick was the warm, approachable parent.
I’ve taken it as a given that she’ll be Senator from WY in the next ten years. Unlike Palin (among the other dissimilarities AL mentioned) the Cheneys already have more money than god, so she doesn’t have to go begging to Uncle Rupert, and she clearly enjoys being the Agent of Evil, Generation II.
Boots Day - March 14, 2010 | 7:10 pm · Link
Really? I can see several reasons why people would respect Dick Cheney, but it’s hard for me to imagine anyone getting excited about hearing him speak.
demo woman - March 14, 2010 | 7:19 pm · Link
@Brian J: I think she could be the next VP candidate. The republicans are always changing the rules of the game. You would have thought that Sarah Palin had been a long term governor of a state. They invent their own resumes. I do think that she over played her hand with the DOJ crap. She will lay low for another week and then be back on Sunday talk shows.
Napoleon - March 14, 2010 | 7:22 pm · Link
@Brian J:
While I understand what you are saying, and it is basically what I said about Dubya, I think with the complete implosion of the media as even a remotely questioning institution, and the compete insanity of the voters, I think it is entirely plausible that someone from the right could not only win the presidency with no elective office (arguably Eisenhoswer did that) but no qualifying experience.
Honus - March 14, 2010 | 7:23 pm · Link
Wasn’t “having spent a lot of time hanging around the West Wing” W’s big foreign policy credential?
me - March 14, 2010 | 7:24 pm · Link
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA (inhale) HAHAHAHAHAHAH! It’s comedy gold!
Napoleon - March 14, 2010 | 7:27 pm · Link
@Napoleon:
PS, I actually think unless there is a huge change in this country we will actually see this in the next, say, 15 years.
curious - March 14, 2010 | 7:27 pm · Link
do not want president tonya harding.
arguingwithsignposts - March 14, 2010 | 7:28 pm · Link
You know, I can’t really get too excited about reading 7 internet page articles about the spawn of pure evil. In other words, tl;dr. If the American public can’t see that she’s pure evil in a different chromosomal makeup, then we deserve what we get.
madmommy - March 14, 2010 | 7:28 pm · Link
Holy shit, Baby Dick and Caribou Barbie are going to be in NOLA at the same time? That’s enough evil and stupid in one place to cause a rift in the time/space continuum.
yuck
Honus - March 14, 2010 | 7:29 pm · Link
Yeah, but Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in WWII. Now I know that’s not Commander-in-Chief of the Alaska National Guard, but…
Cacti - March 14, 2010 | 7:30 pm · Link
I keep hearing the GOP talk about “rebuilding the Reagan coalition”, but it always seems to ignore one crucial point.
Reagan’s coalition was a white resentment coalition, and white voters are going to continue to shrink as a portion of the electorate for the foreseeable future.
John McCain captured the exact same percentage of the white vote that Reagan did in 1980 and got creamed.
jharp - March 14, 2010 | 7:31 pm · Link
I agree that Liz Cheney’s communication skills, mannerisms, and ability to think make Palin look like a big steaming pile of dog doo doo.
But that really ain’t saying much.
Comrade Luke - March 14, 2010 | 7:33 pm · Link
Yet another article filled with starburst-like references.
She’s evil, and she won’t be going away.
scav - March 14, 2010 | 7:33 pm · Link
@arguingwithsignposts: seconded, with pom poms. She may fancy herself Reagan but I’m thinking more Regan with delusions of Goneril.
EDIT: and I agree that lets off Voldermort père off too easily.
JGabriel - March 14, 2010 | 7:36 pm · Link
First Sarah Palin, now Liz Cheney – it sounds like, since the Democrats got the first black president, some Republicans are are jealous and want the first female president to be a GOPer and are determined to find her.
The problem is that they’re so bad at it, they keep finding people like… well, like Sarah Palin and Liz Cheney.
Hint to the GOP: don’t take advice from someone who’s proud to call himself “Quayle’s Brain”.
On second thought, GOP, ignore me and all advice from Democrats. We clearly don’t have your best interests at heart. You just keep listening to that nice boy Bill Kristol. Because he cares.
.
demo woman - March 14, 2010 | 7:38 pm · Link
Our own Brick Oven can out shine Sarah.
Alex S. - March 14, 2010 | 7:41 pm · Link
Her team is abysmal. Goldfarb, Kristol and a Fred Thompson-guy? The Republican Party is entering the brain power drought now.
jomo - March 14, 2010 | 7:42 pm · Link
Though I’m horrified by Sarah Palin – I can see her charm. She has really likeable qualities. She’s pretty, she has a decent sense of humor and she has charisma. Liz Cheney has none of that. She’s smug, unpleasant, has a permanent sneer. She honestly doesn’t scare me as much as Palin – so I don’t see her going very far.
JGabriel - March 14, 2010 | 7:43 pm · Link
@Boots Day:
Well, anyone without horns and a tail and a leer.
.
N. Muntz - March 14, 2010 | 7:44 pm · Link
hA-Ha!
Cacti - March 14, 2010 | 7:45 pm · Link
@jomo:
So, in other words, a female version of her Dad.
JGabriel - March 14, 2010 | 7:47 pm · Link
What substance, pot or acid?
.
gf120581 - March 14, 2010 | 7:49 pm · Link
Well said. Unfortunately for the Republicans, all the potential women candidates they have who are actually competent like Olympia Snowe are pro-choice and therefore not acceptable. So they’re stuck with the likes of Palin and the modern day Lucrezia Borgia.
Sad thing is, the GOP could have had the first black president with, say, Colin Powell. But Powell was too liberal for them. Now, over a decade later, he’s an Obama supporter and they lost out on history.
Can anyone really argue the GOP base and their purity demands haven’t cost the party severely?
Jim, Foolish Literalist - March 14, 2010 | 7:51 pm · Link
Yeah, somebody like that could never make it to the White House. I kid, I kid. I guess Dumbya could turn on a superficial fratboy charm that pleased some people.
I don’t think she could make it to the White House, at least not at the top of a ticket. I see her as more of a nastier version of McCain or Graham, a permanent fixture on the Sunday Shows, driver of demagoguery whipping David Gregory and Jake Tapper into frenzies of fear and faux-trage. The one trait I share with the Cheneys is an abiding contempt for network maroons (remember how Mary Matalin insisted Dick go on MTP other than Hardball, b/c Punkinhead was easier to manipulate than Tweety? How’s that for a journalist’s legacy?). I just wish they weren’t so good at exploiting their stupidity.
Annie - March 14, 2010 | 8:00 pm · Link
It will be interesting to see how Sarah and Liz will each try to be more Reagan than Reagan…In the process, they, hopefully, will destroy each other. One thing Liz will never have is full support of the religious right, not with a gay sister, who has two kids…
@jomo:
I agree. She is smug and unpleasant. And, she can’t fight for her father’s legacy while trying to position herself as the next messiah…
trollhattan - March 14, 2010 | 8:17 pm · Link
@ curious
God I wish I’d written this. I’m using it anyway, thanks.
Best I can do is Bloodless spawn of Satan, but that’s probably been used. I like “Tonya Harding with a better agent.”
It occurs to me that Liz-zard makes Meg Whitman seem almost spectacularly warm and caring by comparison.
Mike in NC - March 14, 2010 | 8:17 pm · Link
Another apple that didn’t fall very far from the tree. Something needs to be done about that Cheney gene pool. Who’s got some Agent Orange?
Zuzu's Petals - March 14, 2010 | 8:18 pm · Link
@demo woman:
I’m not sure she’ll be able to live that down, not if the Dems have a lick of sense.
And she shouldn’t live it down…it says everything about her.
Demon Spawn - March 14, 2010 | 8:20 pm · Link
Please, Please anything but this. One Cheney in a lifetime is more than I can handle.
kth - March 14, 2010 | 8:24 pm · Link
People born and raised in Wyoming generally don’t have their fingers on the pulse of the whole country. They are wont to overestimate the views of the people they see all the time, i.e., the kind of people who congregate at tea parties. Liz Cheney has already overstepped, in the eyes of a Beltway press inclined to give her every benefit of the doubt, with her shrill and opportunistic calumny against Justice Department lawyers who formerly defended people detained as part of the war on terror (I was going to say “accused of terrorism”, but many of them were never charged with anything).
Still, she’s smarter than the rest of the pack, and she might have a chance if she could somehow get someone like Mike Murphy, a Republican operative known to venture outside the cocoon of the conservative movement, to work for her. With repeat abysmal failures like Kristol and Goldfarb, though, I wouldn’t worry too much.
Skepticat - March 14, 2010 | 8:34 pm · Link
@Boots Day: More like the kind of excitement in the lions’ cage when someone tosses in a large piece of raw meat.
Citizen_X - March 14, 2010 | 8:35 pm · Link
Yes, in that same sense that H.P. Lovecraft has some rather interesting short stories.
Who agrees with this lunacy? 9% of the electorate? She’s the viciousness of Palin with none of the folksy charm; the pedigree and politics of Alessandra Mussolini without the modeling career. Good luck with that product, pal.
trollhattan - March 14, 2010 | 8:41 pm · Link
@ Mike in NC
I’ve got it! “The only good Cheney is a gay Cheney.”
Has anybody trademarked this yet?
M. Bouffant - March 14, 2010 | 8:48 pm · Link
Besides the obvious stool joke, what stool (that one sits on) has “prongs?” She may be drifting into Palin’s mixed-metaphor country.
Upper West - March 14, 2010 | 8:50 pm · Link
The New York Magazine article is a disgrace. It fails even the he said/she said low standard of political journalism, by hardly including anything critical about her (or her Dad).
Liberal media indeed.
trollhattan - March 14, 2010 | 9:00 pm · Link
OT: Holy Crap:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03.....ez.html?hp
kommrade reproductive vigor - March 14, 2010 | 9:02 pm · Link
I love it. These people are creaming their pants because Liz Cthcheney is more personable than her dad and smarter than Palin. Christ, at this rate the GOP nominee for president in 2050 will be a small spruce tree.
She says “Go fuck yourself” before you say anything to her.
Nellcote - March 14, 2010 | 9:39 pm · Link
Well, that “talent” and the support of Newt’s GOPAC.
Mnemosyne - March 14, 2010 | 9:58 pm · Link
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Her father didn’t have to be at the top of the ticket to wreak complete fucking havoc on the country. I honestly don’t think Bush would have been nearly as bad as he was without Darth Cheney whispering in his ear.
The Truffle - March 14, 2010 | 10:23 pm · Link
@Brian J: Oy. I could see her as another Karl Rove.
Mike G - March 14, 2010 | 11:19 pm · Link
It’s spelt e-x-c-r-e-m-e-n-t.
Hence the “three prongs of the stool he was able to put together as a majority.” If your stool has prongs, consult a physician.
mai naem - March 14, 2010 | 11:30 pm · Link
@jomo: Well, I kind of agree and disagree with you. The problem is that Republicans are permitted to be nasty. Also too, they’re permitted to be stupid like Palin. Palin, though, has been spectacularly stupid. I mean more stupid then W. Bush and that’s saying something. So, if it comes to Lizzy and Caribou Barbie I think Lizzy the Lizard will win. BTW, these terms are really unfair to caribou and lizards.
Brian J - March 14, 2010 | 11:59 pm · Link
@Napoleon:
Perhaps as vice president.
I just think that the next time there’s a clear chance the Republicans will win—and I don’t think that will be 2012—there will be a number of people clamoring for the job. They will presumably have more extensive alliances than she will have, based on actually having run for office and working in government in a more traditional role. It’s definitely more of a factor at the top of the ticket, but I think it extends to the bottom as well.
Nancy Irving - March 15, 2010 | 5:44 am · Link
“three prongs of the stool he was able to put together as a majority.” –
Doesn’t she mean “fork,” not “stool”?
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio - March 15, 2010 | 5:52 am · Link
Hold the phone. Sarah Palin is pretty?
She is pretty if she is a transgender, former guy who looked like a young Pat Boone before the operations, and now wears a cheap hair extension.
low-tech cyclist - March 15, 2010 | 8:34 am · Link
I’m not worried about Liz Cheney being a factor in our politics indefinitely.
The only thing keeping her in the spotlight is that The Village is willing to give her a lot of air time. The Village isn’t going to have that power to decide what everyone’s talking about 15 years down the road, let alone 40. So in order to maintain a presence, she’s going to have to actually get some voters to give a shit about her. Not gonna happen.
djESNO - March 15, 2010 | 8:38 am · Link
” “If you put Sarah Palin and Liz Cheney in a circle of 100 journalists, asking anything they wish, I’ll tell you, pal, you don’t need a compass to figure that one out,” says Alan Simpson.”
—
you could put a monkey in a tuxedo with sarah palin in a circle of 100 journalists and not need a compass to figure it out (unless you were trying to figure out which ones were the journalists and which one was the monkey). a large bucket of warm hamster vomit compares favorably intellectually to sarah palin. sheesh. unconscionable idiocy (palin) and amoral lunacy (cheney) is what the republican party has to offer? seriously?!