Posted on 11/18/2013 9:49:51 AM PST by SeekAndFind
I’m tempted to call this a clever Cheney family ploy to burnish Liz’s conservative credentials ahead of her primary against Mike Enzi, except … Enzi’s opposed to gay marriage too. It may help her pass a tea-party litmus test but it doesn’t actually gain her anything against the incumbent. On the contrary, all the attention to this subject is likely to remind Wyoming conservatives not only that the Cheney family is notably pro-gay among Republican royalty — Dick Cheney’s other daughter is herself married to a woman — but that Liz herself was widely assumed to be pro-SSM based on things she’s said in the past. Either (a) everyone misunderstood her position before, (b) she’s an exceedingly rare example of someone who used to support gay marriage but has since “evolved” in the other direction, or (c) her endorsement of traditional marriage on “Fox News Sunday” is just an empty pander to tea partiers.
Here’s Heather Poe, who’s married to Liz’s sister Mary, responding to her opposition of SSM yesterday on Facebook. I wonder which of the three explanations above she favors.
I was watching my sister-in-law on Fox News Sunday (yes Liz, in fifteen states and the District of Columbia you are my sister-in-law) and was very disappointed to hear her say “I do believe in the traditional definition of marriage.”
Liz has been a guest in our home, has spent time and shared holidays with our children, and when Mary and I got married in 2012 – she didn’t hesitate to tell us how happy she was for us.
To have her now say she doesn’t support our right to marry is offensive to say the least
I can’t help but wonder how Liz would feel if as she moved from state to state, she discovered that her family was protected in one but not the other.
I always thought freedom meant freedom for EVERYONE.
Mary Cheney, Liz’s sister and Poe’s spouse, replied, “Couldn’t have said it better myself.” Legit sibling feud or campaign charade aimed at highlighting Liz’s ostensible social conservatism? The NYT thinks it’s the former:
The situation has deteriorated so much that the two sisters have not spoken since the summer, and the quarrel threatens to get in the way of something former Vice President Dick Cheney desperately wants — a United States Senate seat for Liz…
People who have spoken to Liz Cheney say she is irritated that her sister is making their dispute public and believes it is hypocritical for Mary Cheney to take such a hard line now, given that she worked for the re-election of President Bush, an opponent of same-sex marriage…
Mary Cheney, 44, said in a phone interview Sunday that she presumed her sister shared her father’s views on marriage, and that view was reinforced because Liz Cheney “was always very supportive” of her relationship with Ms. Poe and the couple’s two children. She learned otherwise in August when Liz Cheney declared, shortly after announcing her Senate candidacy, that she was opposed to same-sex marriage rights. Mary Cheney said it is now “impossible” for the sisters to reconcile as long as Liz Cheney maintains that position.
“What amazes me is that she says she’s running to be a new generation of leader,” Mary Cheney said, citing her 47-year-old sister’s slogan in her campaign against Mr. Enzi, 69. “I’m not sure how sticking to the positions of the last 20 or 30 years is the best way to do that.”
That last paragraph is the killer, since one of Liz’s big headaches in the primary is reassuring primary voters that she’s a bona fide conservative and a bona fide Wyomingite. Enzi and his surrogates, like Rand Paul, have needled her about her east-coast pedigree, knowing that calling her authenticity into question on one point may lead voters to question it on the other. Liz’s counter to all that is that the Senate needs new blood; now here comes Mary Cheney to question whether Liz’s supposed advantage over Enzi — youth and fresh thinking — is much of an advantage after all. Result: Some social-con voters may doubt whether Liz is really as much a supporter of traditional marriage as she says and others may doubt whether she’s really that much different from Enzi. Not a good place to be — especially with Enzi getting good press lately for his early skepticism of ObamaCare and reaching out to tea partiers by publishing op-eds at sites widely read by grassroots conservatives.
Here’s what she said yesterday, and beneath it is what she said in 2009. She never explicitly says in the latter that she supports legalizing gay marriage, but she does say that her “family” endorses the idea that “freedom means freedom for everyone” — the very words that Poe threw back at her in yesterday’s Facebook post. Draw your own conclusions about what her position was at the time.
Traditional marriage is the basic building block of society. If a Senator does not respect that or understand it, and votes for legislation to say otherwise, they have no business serving in the U.S. Senate and electing them to serve will cause irreversible harm to our nation as they support legislation that further deteriorates families and children from being raised by a mother and a father. Mike Enzi understands this and Liz Cheney does not.
Cheney attended elementary school and Junior High in Casper, Wyoming. The family split time between Casper and Washington DC in the 1970s through the '80s following her father's election to Congress.
Yup.
I flat out don’t believe her and envy those that do, I wish could be that innocent and naive. She’s in desperation mode.
Even though all indications are that she’s getting clobbered, given the idiocy that just happened in the Louisiana special House election (where a RINO fooled some Tea party supporters into voting for him over the “establishment” candidate, a strong conservative) I can’t help but still be worried. I presume morons like Mark Levin are still pimping her candidacy.
Here's what I posted on a similar thread this morning:
There is zero reason to trust the Cheney’s on this. This public spat looks manufactured.
Dick Cheney has already come out for end to DADT and for same sex marriage now he is pulling a Kerry to help Liz get elected. The lesbo isnt running for anything so they can make believe they are throwing her under the bus..
:
“She’s in desperation mode.”
Great summary.
Yep. I pretty much summed it up the same way in posts #17 and #23.
I’m surprised that there are a number of gullible freepers on this thread who seem to believe Liz Cheney has always opposed gay marriage and now has a sincere falling out with her sister because of her Senate race. Of course, those of us who have followed her actions from 2007-2012 know her latest position doesn’t gel with that.
It isn’t even just the gay marriage issue, her beliefs on “gay rights” across the board have been reliably liberal for years (have to agree with Mary 100%, dontsa know). The latest example being the Senate bill to make it a federal law that anyone who is “openly gay” can get their employer punished if they were fire from their job and claim it was because they were “gay” (even if that had nothing to do with the reason). The bill got 10 GOP votes and would have received 11 if Cheney was in the Senate.
I don’t think it will have much of an effect with Wyoming GOP voters (especially since Enzi is still popular and has always been a reliable conservative vote there), but Impy makes a decent case that you can never been sure with conservative talking heads like Levin still pushing her candidacy. Interestingly enough, the national liberal media is with them on this and is trying to frame the primary election as “establishment Enzi vs. more conservative tea party challenger Liz Cheney”, if for no other reason than to waste conservative resources in Wyoming and create a news story where none exists. In both cases, no one who has made the claim that Liz Cheney is the “more conservative” candidate has been able to cite a single example where her track record is clearly more conservative than Enzi’s. They just hope that people will believe it if they say it enough times.
How about this...
maybe she's sincerely seen the errors of her past ways and its just coincidental that she's in this GOP primary trying to act like the most conservative......or...
Her dad Dick has publicly sided with her on this tiff and yet he is for gay marriage and for ending DADT both.
And he just happens to make a comment on TV show about Tea party being a positive force in this country WOWing many here, then when asked by Rush about shutdown to defund Obamacare he pretty much said it was a bad idea. )
This is pretty easy to detect stuff.
Dick and Liz's only GOP like interest up till now is defense, Iran, etc, and liberal on gay stuff.
now suddenly they are making so-con statements?
Puh-lease
If you’re a woman, you’re not married unless you have a HUSBAND.
And if a man, you’re not married unless you have a WIFE.
Yep, it is, in fact, as a Catholic I believe that fornication, or premarital sex is wrong, it hasn’t made me go trashing the homes of the high school/college pimps with grafitti, or attack my brother, who was living with his girlfriend for 12 years, and having kids, without marrying her, either in church or legally. I believe that homosexual behavior is wrong, but I have never actually attacked or done any real harm to anyone whom I have known to be homosexual. Again, that’s what the fringe political activists do, they have to make themselves victims, even if people just don’t pay attention to them and let them go about their business. It’s among the most absurd behavior I have ever seen. It also reeks of unhealthy paranoia as well. I mean, if you have to live your life thinking that people who think differently than you are out to get you, that’s just plain depressing.
It’s just narcissism. Sadly, too many people in high places give narcissism a field day...
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