Posted on 08/10/2013 3:06:59 PM PDT by Nervous Tick
The way D.C. political operatives are reacting to the news that Liz Cheney is challenging Sen. Mike Enzi in the Wyoming GOP primary, you’d think the Republican Party had another Sharron Angle on their hands — someone so much more conservative and rhetorically unrestrained than the incumbent or establishment candidate that she wins the primary only to lose a winnable general election race by a wide margin.
Well, Cheney is famously unrestrained. But that’s about where the similarities end. Wyoming is so deep red that the winner of the GOP primary will sail through the general, no matter who it is. And though no one doubts her conservatism, there’s a decent argument to make that Sen. Liz Cheney would actually move Wyoming and the Senate to the left.
Enzi has been an extraordinarily conservative senator, in the tradition of the Mountain West. He has a zero percent NARAL rating, a 93 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union and an 86 percent lifetime rating from the Club for Growth.
Enzi’s track record alone would make it difficult for anyone to outflank him on the right, let alone build a Senate record that is as or more conservative. But in Cheney’s case, despite all her bombast and her famous last name, her previous public positions already show she is less absolutist on social issues than Enzi and no more conservative than him on a range of fiscal and governance issues.
Enzi has strayed occasionally. He angered anti-tax absolutists in his party by supporting parochial legislation to allow states to collect sales taxes for online purchases. And he joined with all but the very most conservative members of the Senate GOP conference to vote for fiscal cliff legislation, which made most of the Bush tax cuts permanent, but allowed them to expire for income above $400,000.
Cheney can attack him from the right on the former, but will eat her own words on the latter. “I think that the potential damage done by going off the fiscal cliff is so significant, that I would hope that even in the town that is very divided right now, people will be able to come together to avoid it,” she said on Fox News in November of last year.
Beyond that, though, it’s hard to find daylight between the two, except on the issues where Cheney appears to be more liberal.
Enzi voted against both tranches of disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy. He voted against legislation to suspend the debt limit earlier this year.
But he’s also voted against social legislation touching on issues where Cheney has staked out fairly liberal views.
He voted against reauthorizing a more expansive Violence Against Women Act, which extended its protections to immigrants, tribal communities, and same sex partners. He voted against repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Recently, as a senior member and former chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, he voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which cleared the panel on a bipartisan basis.
Cheney by contrast has said gay marriage should be left to the states, and that “freedom means freedom for everyone,” suggesting she personally supports it. Her views on abortion are unclear.
All of which suggests Republicans in Washington are annoyed by something other than Cheney’s hyper-conservatism. It may be loyalty to Enzi. Or the desire to avoid an ugly primary fight involving a candidate with the last name Cheney. Perhaps it’s her penchant for engaging in extreme rhetoric.
But though her rhetoric might make her seem farther right than the soft-spoken Enzi, there are decent reasons to think she’s actually more liberal than he is.
Liz Cheney has made a big mistake in running against an incumbent Republican, when she could has run against a Democrat incumbent in her old state of Virginia.
She will lose the primary race and then we will never hear from her against.
It is a shame since she is articulate and attractive in her convictions as a Republican candidate.
imho.
That list has Orrin Hatch as the 10th most conservative. So you can take it for what it’s worth.
Thank you.
As the article points out, and as I’ve been saying, Enzi is more conservative than Cheney will be.
I think the vote against the “Violence Against Women” act took real balls, but it is the true small-government, conservative position.
Voting against disaster relief bills bloated with earmarks and pork is the conservative position.
Enzi has made some dubious votes - creating Medicare Part D, for example. But there’s NO evidence of any type where we might see how Cheney would vote on these issues, the only thing she’s flapped her yap about is the foreign policy issues. On that, she’s clearly a NWO interventionist, a neo-con meddler in the middle east, etc.
And I don’t know about you, but I’ve had more than enough of the neo-cons. The red diaper Jews (like Bill Kristol, Cheney’s co-founder of Keeping America Safe) who want to keep the US meddling in the middle east for the interests of Israel can go peddle their crap to the Democrats, as far as I’m concerned.
“The only “red” county (0bama majority) in Wyoming is Teton County.”
Do you have your colors right? I was under the impression that a Zero majority county is colored blue and that normal people live in counties that are colored red.
Please don’t tell me that the Socialist Lexicographers are effing around with the language again. It will make my head explode which gives me terrible headaches.
Let me add that Liz's dad was Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff.
The 3 or 4 freepers endorsing Liz Cheney will soon be responding with a “devastating breaking news” thread that “RINO Obama pal Mike Enzi once picked his nose in the third grade!!”
Doesn’t she live in Virginia?
WTH is she doing, following in Hillary’s footsteps? Her Parents live in Wyoming. I guess Carpetbaggers come from both Parties.
She should be going after a Democrat Seat where she really lives. We need to add Republicans to the Senate, not eat our own without gaining ground.
BINGO!! She SHOULD have rub against the DEMOCRAT in her state of VIRGINIA!!!! She thinks she can stroll into Wyoming and be crowned!!!
You are letting your hatred of Cheney/Bush/faggotry color your opinion of Enzi. The man is a go along get a long fossil dirt bag “conservative” beltway deal maker.
Our nation has been under assault by rampaging marxists and the only thing Enzi has led the charge on is an internet sales tax. Think about that.
We simply must remove and/or scare the heck out these red state GOP squishes if we are to have any chance of conservatives increasing their influence in the GOP.
>> We simply must remove and/or scare the heck out these red state GOP squishes
By replacing them with EVEN WORSE squishes?
That sounds like a terrible plan to me.
By the way, I don’t hate Liz Cheney, although what she’s doing I consider reprehensible.
I don’t know how you compute that I “hate Bush”, since I haven’t mentioned him.
What’s more, I don’t hate fags. I hate fagGOTRY and the fag LOBBY. Big, big difference.
Our nation is under assault from the homosexual agenda, and Cheney is a republican ally of the left on that all encompassing agenda that goes from the military and immigration, to marriage itself.
To we conservatives, her abortion and homosexual interests knock her out of any consideration for office, especially the Senate.
Seeing her on different talk shows and panels, I have never seen her as anything but conservative.
What I have seen is that she speaks up and doesn't take anything off liberals and doesn't let them spew their lies without challenge.
I don't have a dog in their fight ...but I like conservatives who are speaking up and challenging liberals. IMO, there is a lot more to be said about how a member of Congress speaks up than voting.
Until Cheney decided to run against him, I'd never heard of Enzi and have no clue who he is. OTOH, I can put a face to her and have been impressed with what she has had to say. She's smart!
They aren’t even bothering to defend Liz, just attack Enzi.
Old threads like this prove NUMEROUS times that the Liz Cheney cheerleaders were warned about her on FR. Every single time, they tried to turn the topic back to how “bad” Enzi was. Well, Princess Liz is far worse than Enzi ever was. I have no sympathy over them tearing their hair out now that Princess Liz used daddy’s name to get a cushy elected office.
Elections have consequences.
She is a traitor to the country and the Constitution. Traitors must hang.
You were right all along.
You just told Billy his favorite words!!!! ;)
But of course, he was.
I opposed her as well but she is worse than I could have imagined, Romney in a skirt.
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