In Wyoming, Likely End of Cheney Dynasty Will Close a Political Era (VIDEO)

Stick a fork in her. She's done.

At the New York Times, "If Representative Liz Cheney loses her primary on Tuesday, as is widely expected, the Cowboy State’s conservative tilt will take on a harder edge":

CODY, Wyo. — At an event last month honoring the 14,000 Japanese Americans who were once held at the Heart Mountain internment camp near here, Representative Liz Cheney was overcome with emotions, and a prolonged standing ovation wasn’t the only reason.

Her appearance — with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as former Senator Alan Simpson and the children of Norman Mineta, a Democratic congressman turned transportation secretary who was sent to the camp when he was 10 — was part of a groundbreaking for the new Mineta-Simpson Institute. Ms. Cheney was moved, she said, by the presence of the survivors and by their enduring commitment to the country that imprisoned them during World War II.

There was something else, though, that got to the congresswoman during the bipartisan ceremony with party elders she was raised to revere. “It was just a whole combination of emotion,” she recalled in a recent interview.

As Ms. Cheney faces a near-certain defeat on Tuesday in her House primary, it is the likely end of the Cheneys’ two-generation dynasty in Wyoming as well as the passing of a less tribal and more clubby and substance-oriented brand of politics.

“We were a very powerful delegation, and we worked with the other side, that was key, because you couldn’t function if you didn’t,” recalled Mr. Simpson, now 90, fresh off being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and as tart-tongued as ever about his ancestral party. “My dad was senator and a governor, and if I ran again today as a Republican I’d get my ass beat — it’s not about heritage.”

He was elected to the Senate in 1978, the same year that Mr. Cheney won Wyoming’s at-large House seat, and they worked closely together, two Republicans battling on behalf of the country’s least populated state in an era when Democrats always controlled at least one chamber of Congress.

It’s not mere clout, however, that traditional Wyoming Republicans are pining for as they consider their gilded past and ponder the state’s less certain political and economic future. Before Tuesday’s election, which is likely to propel Harriet Hageman, who is backed by former President Donald J. Trump, to the House, the nostalgia in the state is running deeper than the Buffalo Bill Reservoir.

Mr. Cheney and Mr. Simpson were not only in the leadership of their respective chambers in the 1980s; they, along with Senator Malcolm Wallop, a Yale-educated cold warrior whose grandfather served in both the British House of Lords and the Wyoming Legislature, got along well and often appeared together as a delegation in a sort of road show across the sprawling state (“A small town with long streets,” as the Wyoming saying goes).

Even headier was the administration of President George Bush. Mr. Cheney became defense secretary, and his wife, Lynne, served as chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, while Mr. Simpson was both the second-ranking Senate Republican and one of the president’s closest friends. On top of that, the secretary of state at the time, James A. Baker III, spent summers on his Wyoming ranch, meaning two of the country’s top national security officials could be found doing unofficial promotional work for the state’s tourism industry.

“You’d have Army choppers snatching Cheney and Baker from fishing holes,” recalled Rob Wallace, who was Mr. Wallop’s chief of staff.

As conservative as the state was on the national level — Lyndon B. Johnson is the only Democrat to carry Wyoming in the past 70 years — the Wyoming Republican delegation worked effectively with two well-regarded Democratic governors in that same period, Ed Herschler and Mike Sullivan.

Now, Ms. Cheney hardly even speaks to the two other Wyomingites in Congress — Senators John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, both Republicans — and has little contact with Gov. Mark Gordon. Ms. Lummis has endorsed Ms. Hageman. But Mr. Barrasso and Mr. Gordon, who are mainline Republicans in the Cheney tradition, have sought to maintain neutrality in hopes of avoiding Mr. Trump’s wrath.

“They’ve got to make their own choices and live with the choices that they make,” Ms. Cheney said about the two men, before adding: “There are too many people who think that somebody else will fix the problem, that we can stay on the sidelines and Trump will fade.”

Asked about the Cheney legacy in Wyoming, Mr. Barrasso and Mr. Gordon both declined to comment...

 

Hands Off My Gun

At Amazon, Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America.

W. Frank Eathorne Shakes Up the Wyoming Republican Party (VIDEO)

I've been watching Amazon Prime's "Outer Range," where the setting is the wide-open Wyoming ranchland. If you haven't checked it out it's a pretty good Sci-Fi Western, and all of Season 1's eight episodes are available if you're a stream-binger.

I mention all this because I just came across this article at the Casper Star-Tribune, which really says a lot about politics in the Equality State, the least populated state in the U.S., and very Western. 

See, "Wyo GOP chairman quietly assumed power as party fractured":

A working rancher with a reputation as a soft-spoken charmer, [W. Frank] Eathorne’s journey to political power has not been without controversy: He had a short, questionable career as a Worland police officer, worked as a Terminix pest exterminator in northwest Wyoming and served as a parole officer in south Texas. He returned to Wyoming in 1999 to take over the family ranch and for a period accepted federal agricultural subsidies. Now, he sits at the top of a party that’s been described as both dominant and dysfunctional while emerging as the tip of the spear in Donald Trump’s furious drive to unseat perhaps his greatest political opponent: incumbent Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney.

First-name basis

After Cheney voted to impeach Trump in January 2021, Eathorne helped to orchestrate Cheney’s censure by the state GOP central committee. The move seemed to catch Trump’s attention. After the censure vote, they were on a first-name basis.

“Frank has censured the incompetent Liz Cheney!” Trump announced in an April 2021 statement. “Frank has my complete and total endorsement for his reelection. He will never let you down!”

Since then, Eathorne has solidified his position at the helm of the state party and with Trump.

When the former president decided to appear in Casper at an upcoming Memorial Day weekend rally for Cheney opponent Harriet Hageman, Eathorne said Trump called him personally with the news. Eathorne, a longtime Hageman friend and party ally, then informed the state central committee.

Multiple people said the understanding amongst Wyoming politicos is that Eathorne revels in rubbing shoulders with Trump and Washington elites.

[Former State House Speaker Tom] Lubnau said as much.

“I heard somebody say, and I can’t remember who, that Frank just likes going to those Washington, D.C. parties and wearing cowboy hat and hobnobbing with the elite.”

Although state statute dictates that party leadership not take sides before the August Republican primary, Eathorne has arguably helped Hageman’s campaign by leading successful — although largely symbolic — state and national efforts to censure Cheney and expel her from the party.

In his most recent push, at the February Republican National Committee meeting in Salt Lake City, Eathorne authored a resolution — which national delegates overwhelmingly approved — to censure Cheney and Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger and “cease any and all support of them as members of the Republican Party for their behavior.”

Before she announced her campaign for Congress, Hageman had worked closely with Eathorne in party leadership. She and Eathorne toured historic sites together in Washington, D.C. when they attended national meetings.

“Frank has been a strong leader for the Wyoming Republican Party,” Hageman said in a statement for this story. “He recognizes that his role is to implement the agenda of the grassroots, and that is what he has done. He adheres to the GOP Platform and has represented our state well while serving on the RNC.”

Tent size

But through these efforts, Eathorne has also emerged as a polarizing figure in the GOP.

Eathorne has said as much himself: “In Wyoming, we don’t necessarily embrace the idea of a big tent,” he said on Fox News earlier this year.

The “big tent” approach has been one of the cornerstones of the nation’s Republicanism, espoused by Ronald Reagan as far back as 1967. “Twenty years ago, the state party convention had a ‘big tent’ Republican atmosphere where you had social conservative Republicans, libertarian Republicans or Rotary Club Republicans who had a unified front pulling together to get Republicans elected,” said Rep. Clark Stith, R-Rock Springs.

Few in Wyoming have a more established Republican Party pedigree than Casper oilman Diemer True, who served two terms as state chairman and in both the Wyoming House and Senate. He contends Eathorne’s small-tent approach is a divisive force that has alienated major segments of the party, especially in the population centers of Laramie, Natrona and Campbell counties.

“Frank has failed in a colossal way,” True said. “He is probably the worst chairman that I’ve ever seen in my 50-plus years of being involved in Republican politics. His is absolutely a failed leadership.”

True’s concern centers on Eathorne’s hard-line, “purist” approach to state politics, in which longtime loyal party members are labeled RINOS — Republicans in Name Only — because they disagree with Eathorne and other current party leaders.

“This Republican purity is a good way to become the Republican minority,” True said.

Mary Martin, chairman of the Teton County Republicans, likes Eathorne personally, she said, describing him as amiable and “well mannered.” Like Eathorne, she is upset with Cheney’s criticism of Trump and Cheney’s insistence that the former president is responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

“My disappointment in Frank is that he hasn’t been able to come up with a process to keep the Republican Party with more of a big-tent approach,” she said. “We have a couple of people who come to the Wyoming party meetings who are absolute bullies.”

In addition to Lubnau’s publicized exit, Doug Chamberlain, a former member of party leadership, specifically put his departure from the party on Eathorne.

“Your leadership in regards to how you treat me has ‘crossed the line I have personally drawn’, beyond which I will not allow myself to be treated,” Chamberlain wrote in a September 2020 letter that was marked confidential but eventually leaked. “As a result of these various incidents and issues I will no longer offer my volunteer services as ‘Acting Parliamentarian’ and ‘Acting Treasurer.’

“Thank you for the opportunity to serve you and the WRP. It has been enjoyable and rewarding until recently,” he concluded.

April Poley is campaign coordinator for state Sen. Anthony Bouchard’s, R-Cheyenne, House run against Cheney and a former member of state GOP leadership under Eathorne. When she told state party leadership that she was backing Bouchard, she was “instantly” removed from the group text chat used by elected leaders of the party.

“It was like I was excommunicated from a church,” Poley said.

Poley hasn’t been the only party operative to find themselves on the outside looking in.

“Twenty years ago you’d have more than 400 delegates to the state convention, whereas this last Saturday [May 7] you had 285 delegates to the convention,” Stith said.

At the same time, the Wyoming Republican Party’s focus on purity has coincided with some significant legislative victories. Conservative lawmakers sought for years to pass a Voter ID law in Wyoming. The effort finally succeeded last year. Prior to the 2021 session, the Wyoming Legislature had only passed two abortion-related bills in 30 years, according to an analysis by the nonprofit news site The 19th. Since then, it has passed three including a so-called “trigger bill,” that will eliminate nearly all abortions in the state if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, which appears likely.

Eathorne’s most avid supporters in the party view him as a galvanizing force who is willing to stand up against what they view as assaults from the left and failures to deliver from establishment Republicans. One of Eathorne’s staunchest backers is Karl Allred, the Uinta County GOP chairman who first rose to prominence in Wyoming for suing then-Gov. Matt Mead over renovations at the Wyoming Capitol.

Allred believes that if a person identifies as Republican but can’t agree with at least 80% of the state party’s platform, “you oughta look somewhere else.” He sees many of the Republican members of the Legislature as “Democrats that are now in the Republican Party.”

Still, Eathorne’s grip on the party doesn’t always translate to legislative success. Even with vocal support from Trump and conservative Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, for example, the Eathorne wing of the party failed in several attempts to block “crossover” voting in the state primary that allows voters to change their party affiliation at the polling place. Hageman supporters contend the practice could benefit Cheney. Similarly, GOP party leaders went into a special legislative session — which Eathorne personally pressed for in a letter to legislative leadership — with an ambitious set of 21 bills opposing federal vaccine mandates but were able to pass only one relatively meek measure limiting federal enforcement.

The most recent example of party tensions came during the May state GOP convention, when most members of the Laramie County delegation were refused seats over a rules violation. Earlier, most of the delegates of Natrona County had been excluded because of a dispute over party dues.

Both counties have clashed with party leadership, leading some observers to question whether the rule violations were really an excuse to punish those who, in the eyes of the party, hadn’t toed the line.

When rule violations by other — albeit smaller — counties were brought to light, the party declined to take similar actions, even going so far as to remove a rule from the bylaws that smaller counties had violated...

Keep reading.  

Liz Cheney on 'This Week' (VIDEO)

The defeat in Afghanistan will certainly resonate in international politics for years to come. I'm still gobsmacked yet fascinated about this whole thing, especially how swiftly things fell apart, and the shape of the future for the nation. The Afghan people are worthy of your prays. 

I'm also interested in it from a policy perspective. I'm neoconservative, a dreaded "neocon," to listen to all these pro-isolationism and "Never Trumpers," the majority of whom were warmongering boosters just a few years ago. I saw former Breitbart writer John Nolte on Twitter ragging about how awful U.S. policy has been, but I'd bet if you check the archives there from, say, a decade ago, you'd find all kinds of attacks on President Obama and his own pledge to surge the troops with a firm deadline for a troop withdraw, to say the least.

To be honest, the fact is each and all the last four presidents bear responsibly, but clearly, none more than President Biden.

What to do now? I mean, if I were in charge of course U.S. troops would have stayed. The U.S. would have maintained bases and prisons, and would have had robust air-power to support ground operations, including throughout the hinterlands across the country. A number of commentators have noted that just keeping U.S. forces in country, with no announcement of a troop withdrawal, would have been preferred, and of course we could have temporarily surged troops if things got out of hand. 

Now we'll have to continue fighting there, for one thing, to prevent a humanitarian and regional security nightmare from taking place. This may not be a popular position right now, but it's stupid to argue that the U.S today is more secure today than it was just a week or so ago. 

At the video, Liz Cheney argues that instead of ending the war, U.S. policy --- in both the Trump and Biden administrations --- has guaranteed the war there will continue.

She's not a popular figure in her party, and it'll be interesting to see how she fares in the 2022 midterms, but she's firm and consistent in her positions, and I think she's great.

Watch: 

Liz Cheney: A Clinton Republican (VIDEO)

At the Minneapolis Star Tribune, "New attack ad brands Cheney as 'Clinton Republican'."

Liz Cheney Slams Elizabeth Warren as a 'Laughingstock'

You gotta love it!

At WaPo, "Rep. Liz Cheney says Elizabeth Warren is a "laughingstock" for having claimed Native American ancestry."

CNN’s Jake Tapper: “What about the language the President uses and the joking references to genocide against Native Americans?”

Rep. Liz Cheney: “Elizabeth Warren has made herself a laughingstock, and I don’t think anybody should be surprised that’s been the reaction to her” pic.twitter.com/15VbWPFLq4

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 10, 2019

Liz Cheney on 'Face the Nation' (VIDEO)

I don't know about Ms. Liz's hairdo. It makes her look older. She's a good looking woman, and a hard-headed conservative. She's matronly now, wtf?

I guess it's good for her reelection efforts. House members run for reelection every two years, so you're never really off the campaign cycle.

With Margaret Brennan this morning:

Dick and Liz Cheney's Exceptional is Out in Paperback

I blogged this book a lot almost exactly one year ago, upon its release.

It's now available in paper, and more timely than ever.

At Amazon, Dick and Liz Cheney, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

Obama the Villain in Exceptional

Here's the book, which I hope to start reading as soon as this weekend, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

And at the New York Times, "Review: In ‘Exceptional,’ the Cheneys Make Obama the Villain":

Former presidents may keep quiet about those who occupy the White House once they leave, but the code clearly does not extend to vice presidents. Nearly seven years after leaving office, Dick Cheney has produced a book that amounts to a stinging indictment of President Obama as an ineffectual, America-hating, military-destroying, soft-on-terrorism appeaser whose tenure has damaged the country.

It is a case he prosecutes relentlessly. To the witness stand, Mr. Cheney and his daughter and co-author, Liz Cheney, summon the ghosts of presidents past, including Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan, to testify to the greatness of America and what they call the bipartisan postwar tradition of muscular leadership on the world stage.

This is a tradition Mr. Obama has shirked, the writers argue, making him a modern-day Neville Chamberlain. “The damage that Barack Obama has done to our ability to defend ourselves is appalling,” they write in “Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.” “It is without historical precedent. He has set us on a path of decline so steep that reversing direction will not be easy.”

But while styled as a condemnation of Mr. Obama, this book — appearing just as the Republican primary contest is getting underway in earnest — is actually a prod to the Republicans seeking to succeed him. Although Mr. Cheney noted during a speech in Washington this week that he is no longer running for office, he clearly is seeking to influence those who are.

The Cheneys are championing a strain of national security conservatism that waned even within their own party because of the flawed intelligence leading to the Iraq invasion in 2003 and the later travails of the occupation. Even Mr. Bush’s brother Jeb Bush has said that if he had been president, he would not have authorized the invasion had he known then what he knows now, a position shared by other Republican candidates.

And yet, the post-Iraq isolationist streak that seemed on the ascendance for a while has also begun to fade with the rise of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in Syria and Iraq and Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Although today’s candidates are not showcasing the unpopular Mr. Cheney in their campaigns, they are, to some extent, voicing a more hawkish message on foreign policy, especially amid the debate over Mr. Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran.

Whether Mr. Cheney is the right messenger for the moment is open to question. While even some Democrats agree with his criticisms of Mr. Obama — that he has given away too much to Iran, that he has not done enough to help Ukraine against Russia, that his withdrawal from Iraq paved the way for the Islamic State — Mr. Cheney all but invites the “well, what-about-you” counterargument...

Okay, yeah, what about you?

The Bush administration's foreign policy looks better with each passing day. For example, see Glenn Reynolds, "SO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DID ALL THE STUFF THEY ACCUSED BUSH OF DOING. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS, BUSH WON THE WAR, AND THEY LOST IT."

They lost it alright.

But back to the New York Times.

Dick and Liz Cheney's New Book is Out Today!

I'm looking forward to diving in.

Get your copy, at Amazon, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

And ICYMI, "Restoring American Exceptionalism."

Dick and Liz Cheney on CBS 'This Morning'

The Cheneys' new book's out tomorrow, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

Restoring American Exceptionalism

Dick and Liz Cheney's new book is here, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

And they write at today's Wall Street Journal, "President Obama has dangerously surrendered the nation’s global leadership, but it can be ours again — if we choose his successor wisely":

In 1983, as the U.S. confronted the threat posed by the Soviet Union, President Ronald Reagan explained America’s unique responsibility. “It is up to us in our time,” he said, “to choose, and choose wisely, between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.” It was up to us then—as it is now—because we are the exceptional nation. America has guaranteed freedom, security and peace for a larger share of humanity than any other nation in all of history. There is no other like us. There never has been.

Born of the revolutionary ideal that we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights,” we were, first, an example to the world of freedom’s possibilities. During World War II, we became freedom’s defender, at the end of the Cold War, the world’s sole superpower. We did not seek the position. It is ours because of our ideals and our power, and the power of our ideals. As British historian Andrew Roberts has observed, “In the debate over whether America was born great, achieved greatness or had greatness thrust upon her, the only possible conclusion must be: all three.”

No other nation, international body or “community of nations” can do what we do. It isn’t just our involvement in world events that has been essential for the triumph of freedom. It is our leadership. For the better part of a century, security and freedom for millions of people around the globe have depended on America’s military, economic, political and diplomatic might. For the most part, until the administration of Barack Obama, we delivered.

Since Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed us the “Arsenal of Democracy” in 1940, Republican and Democratic presidents alike have understood the indispensable nature of American power. Presidents from Truman to Nixon, from Kennedy to Reagan, knew that America’s strength had to be safeguarded, her supremacy maintained. In the 1940s American leadership was essential to victory in World War II, and the liberation of millions from the grip of fascism. In the Cold War American leadership guaranteed the survival of freedom, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the defeat of Soviet totalitarianism. In this century it will be essential for the defeat of militant Islam.

Yet despite the explosive spread of terrorist ideology and organizations, the establishment of an Islamic State caliphate in the heart of the Middle East, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and increasing threats from Iran, China, North Korea and Russia, President Obama has departed from this 75-year, largely bipartisan tradition of ensuring America’s pre-eminence and strength...

Keep reading.

And again, don't miss this essential book, at Amazon, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

'Cheney, like her father, is an unapologetic neoconservative who favors muscular use of American military power overseas, a policy that does not sit well with many grassroots conservatives, particularly in the libertarian-leaning West...'

That's Liz Cheney, who I love, but who's now dropping out of the Wyoming Senate race, not surprisingly.

At CNN, "First on CNN: Liz Cheney to abandon Senate bid" (via Memeorandum).

Liz Cheney Will Run for U.S. Senate

Let's be honest here: Liz Cheney really doesn't want to be a U.S. Senator, she wants to be president. Thus she's got to have experience in elected office, and the Senate would give her a credible, if not esteemed, perch to launch a presidential bid.

As for the politics of Wyoming, they say Mike Enzi's well liked, although no doubt tea party conservatives could pick through his voting record and find thing to grumble about. Is Liz Cheney that grassroots as to have automatic support of the conservative outsiders storming the gates of Washington? I don't know, although certainly anti-incumbency sentiment could help her in the primary.

Personally, I'd like to see a President Cheney, hence I fully support her upstart challenge to the incumbent. But the whiff of carpetbagging is strong, and lots of establishment types --- D.C. beltway hacks who have a lot of power --- aren't so thrilled with Cheney's chutzpah, so we'll see.

At the Hill, "Liz Cheney to primary Sen. Enzi in Wyoming." (Via Memeorandum.)



PREVIOUSLY: "Liz Cheney Looking to Challenge Mike Enzi for Wyoming Senate."

Liz Cheney Looking to Challenge Mike Enzi for Wyoming Senate

That would be sitting GOP Senator from Wyoming Mike Enzi, but who wouldn't love to see Liz Cheney take the seat?

Well, actually, a few folks at NYT's piece weren't thrilled with the idea, considering Enzi's well liked in the state. But wow, Liz Cheney is the kind of unflinching hawk we need in office these days, a conservative woman with impeccable national security creds.

I saw Hugh Hewitt tweeting earlier, but William Jacobson is on the case, "Run, Liz Cheney, Run."

Jon Kyl set an important example by not running in '12. It helps party and country to retire at the right time. http://t.co/zTQISVx8b5”

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) July 7, 2013

Liz Cheney Slams Obama's 'I'm No Dick Cheney' Idiocy

Awesome.

Background at Flopping Aces.

I hope she runs for Congress.

The Left's War Against Liz Cheney

I'm just going to come out with it: I've got a crush on Liz Cheney! Her new PAC is awesome, and she's sending leftists into paroxysms of fear:

And see Ron Radosh, "The Media’s War Against Liz Cheney":

You can’t win with liberal supporters of a weak dovish foreign policy, especially if you are a woman. We’re familiar with their attacks on Sarah Palin, whom they accuse of being a know-nothing, uneducated, unprepared, right-wing partisan. Liz Cheney obviously knows her stuff, is prepared and educated, and certainly does not need to be brought up to speed. She has five children, still manages to function as a serious spokesman for a new foreign policy, and is good looking and charming.

Of course, their real fear is that before long, Liz Cheney will run for a major national office. What could be worse–an attractive, articulate female conservative with knowledge and guts, running for office ... this woman must be brought down.