Tuesday, July 16, 2013

UM, MAYBE THE GOP WON'T BE ABLE TO SUPPRESS THE CRAZY IN 2016

Liz Cheney announced today that he's challenging incumbent Republican Mike Enzi for the Wyoming Senate seat that's up in 2014. This is not making everyone on the right happy -- over at Power Line, where in 2009 you could read not one but two posts urging Liz to run for president in 2012, there is distress:
Perhaps ... she will be able to articulate a compelling rationale for her candidacy. But for now, this looks like exactly the kind of primary challenge that conservative Republicans should not be mounting. Cheney is neither significantly more conservative than Enzi nor significantly more electable; her real advantage as a primary candidate is that she is significantly more glamorous. That isn't enough.
Hot Air's Allahpundit is also not with the program:
I'm just not clear on why she'd necessarily be a significant upgrade over him. She's known mainly for being a super-hawk in the mold of her dad, but super-hawkishness (as distinct from hawkishness) was, I thought, momentarily out of fashion among grassroots conservatives. McCain and Graham are the two Republicans in Congress most loathed by the base, in part because of their penchant for interventionism, but Cheney presumably will be right there with them on foreign policy in the Senate. Some people seem to want Enzi out because he's a multi-term incumbent and the Senate needs "new blood," but how new is the blood when the "insurgent" is the daughter of the last Republican VP?
Or are these just the voices of ... RINOs?

We already knew from an article that ran in The New York Times earlier this month that the Wyoming GOP is not happy that Cheney is running -- but I guess this is the new GOP, a party in which you're deemed impure if you ever work with Democrats, as Townhall's Kurt Schlichter angrily explains:
The Times hailed him as "a studious, low-key legislator who worked well with Senator Edward M. Kennedy," and Enzi probably thinks that's a compliment.

For that reason alone he needs to go.

He needs to go because we can do better. It's not about Mike Enzi or any other Republican politician. It's about winning this war against progressivism, and if you aren't leading the fight then bow out and make room for someone who will.

Liz Cheney ... wants to win. Not to "compromise," not to "work together," not sit around singing "Kumbayah" with the liberals. She wants to win.

Enzi wants to be a sober, serious legislator working with his liberal friends across the aisle to make a better country. Except there are no friends across the aisle, and the liberals do not want to make this a better country. Liberals want to ruthlessly acquire and maintain power and control over every aspect of our lives, and anyone who does not see and understand that and who can't commit to destroying their hideous plans for our country needs to get out the way for a true conservative warrior.
It's interesting that this happened today, because one of the first things I read this morning was a column by Harry Enten arguing that insurgent anger won't give the GOP an extreme presidential nominee in 2016, because GOP voters want to win and GOP power brokers have a lot of control over the process. But does it seem to you as if GOP power brokers are successfully restraining the crazies these days? The apparent refusal of the House to pass real immigration reform is one sign that they're not. Liz Cheney's run is another.

What happens if party power brokers lose even more control? What happens if voters decide that, after the McCain and Romney losses, their most electable candidate is someone who's high on the crazy scale? I think we could get a Ted Cruz nomination -- and maybe he'll run with Liz Cheney. I think the old pattern could hold -- but it really may not this time.

10 comments:

Joseph Nobles said...

Liberals want to ruthlessly acquire and maintain power and control over every aspect of our lives, and anyone who does not see and understand that and who can't commit to destroying their hideous plans for our country needs to get out the way for a true conservative warrior.

It's always projection.

Zandar said...

Rand Paul is much more likely a nominee than Ted Cruz, but the "power brokers" have already decided on Chris Christie...and still praying for Jeb Bush.

The problem is will the "power brokers" still matter?

Increasingly, the answer is no.

Victor said...

The other funny thing about Liz, is her DC connection.
She's the Conservative MSM folks point to, to make their point about how normal they are, because their children play kid's soccer with hers.
She's spent a good chunk of her life in or around the government and DC.

But she has the perfect pedigree:
Beyond being Darth's daughter, she was a cheerleader in HS.
She went to the Chicago Law School (so she counters that Chicago thug, Obama).
She worked for the World Bank.
And she has a quiver-full with 5 kids.

She and Cruz as a tandem, is a distinct possibility. Not probable, but certainly possible.

And yeah, I think the Republican powers-that-be, have lost control.

They are now the RINO's to the base.

Philo Vaihinger said...

Santorum ready to try again? You bet.

Buford said...

"It's about winning this war against progressivism". Please define "war" why is it always a "war"? I seem to recall warfare is a bad thing...so the GOPers want war against the majority of the USofA? Bring it on ya slimy waste of good air...

tony in san diego said...

"Except there are no friends across the aisle, and the liberals do not want to make this a better country. Liberals want to ruthlessly acquire and maintain power and control over every aspect of our lives, and anyone who does not see and understand that and who can't commit to destroying their hideous plans for our country needs to get out the way for a true conservative warrior."

It's always projection with these guys.

Lawrence said...

They are right about one thing. The war. The treaty at Appomatox was just an armistice. They substituted Christian bigotry for overt racism and spread their pathology to the rural west, but the racism is still underneath. And underneath it all is white male supremacy. And we were doing well, for a time. We passed laws against spousal rape, domestic battery, and child abuse. Properly enforced, how is a dirt poor nobody in trailer park land supposed to feel like a man?
Yes, obviously, I hate them. And my hate hurts me much more than it ever will them. But I think liberals should be clear about our agenda, this war. Their freedom is our slavery. And the reverse. And we should expect them to fight to the last man over every inch of ground. We will do the same. And the really inconvenient part is that waiting for the old white men to die is a bad plan. We have to break the Confederates before we fight the corporations, who are killing the planet. And the planet won't wait.

Buford said...

Lawrence...well said, and as an Old White Guy, I figure to die in the fighting, anyway...I was of the mind that with the election of President Obama, we would see the light...It turns out that it is the light of a burning cross...sheesh...

sblefty said...

Is there a more disgustingly ambitious GOP scum than Liz Cheney?

She's right up there with Paul Ryan and Sarah palin.

She's jonesing so bad for power, it radiates off of her in waves.

Cheney's already made up her mind - first female president of the USA. She seriosly thinks she has a shot at it. What a delusional, sickening display of hubris and entitlement.

neroden@gmail said...

Given that here in the real world, Enzi has a reputation as an extremist right-winger who never votes for liberal legislation -- the sort of guy who votes for "government in your uterus" and "oil drilling in ANWR", while deregulating banks and charging fees to get into national parks, while abolishing the estate tax, while imprisoning gay people

-- I can't imagine what the right-wingers are thinking. Liz Cheney is actually more leftwing than Enzi.