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New York (CNN) -- Liz Cheney, whose upstart bid to unseat Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi sparked a round of warfare in the Republican Party and even within her own family, is dropping out of the Senate primary, sources told CNN late Sunday. Cheney, the eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, began telling associates of her decision over the weekend and could make an official announcement about the race as early as Monday.

First on CNN: Liz Cheney, whose bid to unseat Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi sparked a round of warfare in the Republican Party and even within her own family, is dropping out of the Senate primary, sources told CNN's John King. Cheney, the eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, began telling associates of her decision over the weekend and could make an announcement about the race as early as Monday.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said he was “surprised” that his daughter Mary, who is a lesbian, publicly attacked her sister Liz on Facebook over her views on same-sex marriage. “We were surprised that there was an attack launched against Liz on Facebook, and wished it hadn’t happened,” Cheney said Tuesday during an event at the National Press Club to promote his new book. “It’s always been dealt with within the context of the family and frankly that’s our preference.” Cheney declined to address the subject further, telling the moderator, “don’t waste your time.” The Cheney sisters’ very public feud...

There are individual haters on the right and individual haters on the left. But there is no large-scale hatred in the United States of America today that compares with the hatred of the left for the right. Whereas the right regards the left as wrong -- even destructively wrong -- the left regards all those on the right as evil. Sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted -- these are typical descriptions of the right made by the most respected names on the left. This hatred is what enabled MSNBC's Martin Bashir to broadcast -- reading from a teleprompter, meaning...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney took the side of his U.S. Senate candidate daughter Liz in her high-profile spat over gay marriage with lesbian sister Mary, saying Monday that he was "pained" that the family dispute had become so public, Politico reported. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, issued a statement noting that the gay-rights issue was one "we have dealt with privately for many years." "[We] are pained to see it become public," the parents wrote. "Since it has, one thing should be clear. Liz has always believed in the traditional definition of marriage." The parents said Liz Cheney "has...

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...

To fully understand the state of play in the Republican party, look no further than Sens. Mike Enzi (WY) and Pat Roberts (KS). Both are reliable, mainstream conservatives, yet neither have a record of seeking a fight or standing on principle. Think Orrin Hatch, without the tab-collars. Both, however, stood with Ted Cruz in the fight over ObamaCare. Not coincidentally, both face serious primary challengers. Sen. Mike Enzi is being challenged by Liz Cheney, who criticizes his "go-along-to-get-along" approach to government. Sen. Pat Roberts, who helped guide HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius through the nomination process, is being challenged by doctor,...

Cheney: ‘I Don’t Pay a Lot of Attention to What Barack Obama Says’ By Patrick Brennan June 16, 2013 10:23 AM Dick Cheney said this morning that “it’s good” the executive branch is still running counterterrorism surveillance operations, but he’s unhappy with how the president has talked about them and defended them. The president “ought to be able to say this is a righteous program,” Cheney said, but President Obama instead has run the program while claiming — most prominently in his speech at the National Defense University recently – that the War on Terror is coming to an end....

Republican Senate primary challengers are looking to use Syria as wedge to gain traction in their bids to unseat GOP incumbents. [WATCH VIDEO] Against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), nearly every primary challenger has come out early and loud in opposition to military engagement in Syria. And nearly every senator facing a contested primary — aside from Graham, who has expressed support — is still undecided, a week after President Obama said he’d go to Congress for approval. The vote is one that could provide some much-needed...

Mary Cheney, the younger daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney who married her long-time partner Heather Poe last year, chastised her older sister, a Republican who is running for the Senate, for her opposition to same-sex marriage in a posting on Facebook. Liz Cheney, who is seeking a Senate seat in Wyoming, said on Friday that she was "not pro-gay marriage." "For the record, I love my sister, but she is dead wrong on the issue of marriage," Mary Cheney wrote on Facebook, according to the New York Times. "Freedom means freedom for everyone," she wrote, repeating a phrase...

Mary Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney and sister to Wyoming senatorial candidate Liz Cheney, severely denounced her sister’s statement on gay marriage, posting on her Facebook page that marriage was “not something to be decided by a show of hands.” “For the record, I love my sister, but she is dead wrong on the issue of marriage,” Cheney wrote. “Freedom means freedom for everyone. That means that all families—regardless of how they look or how they are made—all families are entitled to the same rights, privileges and protections as every other.” Mary Cheney encouraged her Facebook friends to share the...

Wyoming senatorial candidate Liz Cheney definitively stated her opposition to gay marriage on Friday, despite the pro-marriage stance of her father Dick Cheney, and her sister Mary Cheney, who married her partner last year. “I am strongly pro-life and I am not pro-gay marriage,” declared Cheney in a campaign statement. “I believe the issue of marriage must be decided by the states, and by the people in the states, not by judges and not even by legislators, but by the people themselves.” Cheney issued the statement because she felt opponent (and friend of her father’s) Mike Enzi was “distorting her...

OTTAWA - U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, who says he recently discovered he is likely a Canadian, must win security clearance from Canada's spy agency, fill out a four-page form and then wait up to eight months to sever his ties to America's northern neighbor. Cruz, a Texas Republican who has fueled speculation that he may run for president in 2016, was born in Canada, which automatically makes him a citizen. On Monday he offered to renounce that citizenship. ... People giving up Canadian citizenship must prove they are or will become a citizen of another country, do not live in...

Liz Cheney on Wednesday asked Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi to reimburse the U.S. Treasury if he accepts federal subsidies as part of his congressional health care plan offered through an exchange, as set up under recent health care reforms sometimes called Obamacare. In a Wednesday interview, Enzi answers Cheney’s request by saying he’s been trying to defund and dismantle Obamacare since 2009 and will continue to do so. It was the second consecutive day Cheney used Obamacare as campaign fodder against her opponent and fellow Republican in the 2014 Senate race. Cheney spurred her series of attacks Tuesday after the...

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....

Some of the GOP's most senior senators made it on the National Journal's list of "Top 10 lawmakers who could lose a primary next year." Minority leader Mitch McConnell, South Carolina's Lindsey Graham and Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi have been officially marked as "in danger" by the website, along with Idaho Republican Rep Mike Simpson and Democrat Brian Schatz from Hawaii. McConnell, the 71-year-old Senate stalwart who entered the chamber in 1985, faces tea partier Matt Bevin in the primary, with Alison Lundergan Grimes running as a Democrat. His campaign manager Jesse Benton has boasted "there is absolutely no risk...

There are no indispensable men, but go to Washington and everyone treats everyone else as indispensable. Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have been in the United States Congress since 1985. In that time the national debt has grown from $1,823,103,000,000.00 to $16,066,241,407,385.89. In that time the GOP went from being the part of small government to the party of slightly smaller than the Democrats. No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, TARP, the General Motors bailout, and so much more happened on their watch. But they remain and voters who vote party and not person keep supporting them. But they...

It sounds like a small-bore infraction: Liz Cheney, a United States Senate candidate in Wyoming, bought a state fishing license last summer even though she had not lived in the state for a year, as required. But the matter has inflamed her critics in the state, who have already labeled her an interloper and taken issue with her challenge to Senator Michael B. Enzi in next year’s Republican primary. Mr. Enzi is a popular three-term incumbent who is as conservative as Ms. Cheney. “It’s a serious misstep,” said Liz Brimmer, a Republican strategist in Wyoming and former chief of staff...

It would be silly to make Caroline Kennedy the White House science adviser: She's not a scientist. It would be silly to name her fire commissioner of New York City: She has no background in public safety. The standards are different in other fields. Kennedy has no previous known interest in Japan, Asia or international relations and is not a diplomat. But Barack Obama has chosen her to be the next ambassador to Japan. Liz Cheney, likewise, is not inhibited by anything she lacks. She went to high school in northern Virginia, college in Colorado and law school in Chicago,...

There are few policy differences between Wyoming Republican Senate candidate Liz Cheney and the incumbent she's trying to oust in 2014, Sen. Mike Enzi. Except for one issue: Gay marriage. Unlike Enzi, the 46-year-old daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney supports the right for states to legalize gay marriage. At least that's what she said in 2009, in an interview with MSNBC, of all places. At that was a time when the notion of same-sex marriage had considerably less support.