Liz and Mary Cheney, and Heather Poe (Mary’s wife), are having a family feud on Facebook over Liz’s anti-gay comments yesterday on Fox News Sunday. Heather says it best:
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
Some will say that this is a piece of campaign ratfucking, similar to the poll that Kay posted from a PAC opposing Liz that has her support pegged at 17% (when everyone knows it should be 27%). By complaining loud and long, Heather and Mary might be sending a message to Wyoming that Liz really does hate the gays with the intensity required to qualify as a right-thinking Republican primary challenger. Maybe so, but everyone gets dirty in a mudfight, and Liz’s campaign is already a dirty, ugly mess, so if this is a strategy, it’s on par with the general stupidity that’s dogged Liz’s campaign since the beginning.
JPL
LIz reminds me of her mother, a cold hearted hag. Somehow the President will be the blame that Heather is only a sister-in-law in fifteen states.
Patricia Kayden
Would being vehemently (and hypocritically) anti-gay hurt Liz in a Republican primary? Given Tea Baggers’ extremism, I doubt it.
Joey Maloney
The Cheneys are a lot of things. Subtle isn’t one of them. That’s at least a couple of dimensions too deep for them. Shooting a Log Cabin Republican in the face would be more Liz’s speed.
Betty Cracker
I think it’s part of a Wile E. Coyote strategy to obtain wingnut cred — and MC and HP are in on it.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: It wouldn’t work, imo, because Liz is for equal rights for her sister but not for anyone else. She’s a hypocrite and that will stick with some voters. She’ll get the support of twenty-seven percent no matter what, though.
Elmo
Nah. I think she just doesn’t care about her sister. I got married in September to my partner of 25 years – none of my brothers – wingers all – attended the wedding.
One brother has never married, and the other two have about a half-dozen marriages between them. My partner and I have been together a quarter century. But “traditional marriage” is better than our relationship.
Fuck conservatives.
Chyron HR
Will Mary Cheney have to apologize to Dick for saying that he has a gay daughter?
Jamey
Wait, Liz Cheney isn’t gay? All this time I’ve totally been picking up the closeted/not-really-closeted vibe…
MattF
So, it seems that the Cheneys aren’t such a happy family after all. Big surprise, considering.
priscianus jr
This is not a strategy. This is reality.
Ben Cisco
Some NeoConfederates can be accepting of issues ONLY when their family is involved.
Lizard don’t roll that way.
Ash Can
@Betty Cracker: Like JPL, I also believe this wouldn’t work (and that it’s more likely Liz throwing her family under the bus than a scheme involving them) because of that second paragraph in the citation. Heather is serving notice that Liz is crawling with gay cooties, and that’s what the bigots who make up Liz’s voting base are going to see.
Violet
Being that inconsiderate to her sister may be ok for some teabaggers but it will lose others who think family is important.
Elizabelle
I don’t see this playing well in Wyoming, because even among those uncomfortable with gay people, the idea of publicly throwing your sister under the bus so you can run for the Senate?
People will pick up on the disloyalty and disrespect here, even those who think being gay is an aberration. You might not be thrilled with your nephew’s proclivities, but it would pain you to see him treated, in public, like Liz is treating Mary.
Mainly, Mary’s saying “You liked being at our home plenty, now you’re saying you have problems with me and my partner, so you can run for the Senate?”
Whole episode says that Liz is a hypocrite, and is pandering.
Both true, but do you want to be that brazen about it?
There’s a real level of disrespect for conservative Wyoming voters, on how low candidate Liz thinks they are, and I think they will pick up on it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Vile people, all of them. I know nothing about Heather Poe, but if she’s married to Dick Jr Jr (or is it Dick Jr Sr?), she ain’t right.
There might be another layer to to the resentment, too. I’ve always read Mary Dick Jr is Big Dick’s favorite, but the right makes it impossible for her to be a candidate, at least in Wyoming (though who the hell knows? WY had the first woman elected as Governor, and first female rep, IIRC), so Liz Dick Jr gets to fail at vindicating Daddy before his machinery gives out.
Elizabelle
@Violet:
You said it way better and shorter.
I think Liz is going to run afoul of family values on this one.
Elizabelle
@Elmo:
I think that was the case in the Robert Mosbacher family too. Lesbian relationship of a sister was the longest running partnership in the clan.
ETA: I’m sorry about your brothers’ behavior. Maybe they’ll come around, maybe they won’t. Main thing is that you have a happy marriage to a great partner.
MattF
@Violet: Maybe, but given all the not-talking-to-my-family stories I read here, there will be a TP faction that supports Liz. We’re not talking about empathic behavior here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was half right, Nellie Ross was elected gov of Wyoming when her husband died during the campaign– elected and narrowly lost re-election bid. Jeanette Rankin, first woman elected to Congress, was from Montana.
Ash Can
@MattF: I agree. Liz’s voting base is all about being a true believer, and if that means alienating family, no prob; they can cherry-pick scriptural verses to support that. Instead, it’ll be an ebil ghey revealing her to be a ghey sympathizer that does her in.
OzarkHillbilly
@Violet: @Elizabelle: You guys don’t know many homophobes do you? Homosexuals are incapable of being human much less having “family values”. They are an affront to God, therefor, it is not only OK to burn gay people at the stake, it is required to light the fire. Brother, sister, father, mother, son, daughter, niece, nephew, aunt, uncle… None are safe.
geg6
Heeheehee. Couldn’t happen to a better family.
Violet
@MattF: I agree, there will be some that support Liz maybe even because she said that about her own family. But others will find it part of a pattern of her being inconsiderate and power-hungry.
@OzarkHillbilly: Sure, I get that. But not every single Republican is that much of a rabid homophobe. There’s a continuum, where some will find it merely distasteful, and others find it an abomination. It’s the ones who find it distasteful that might find Liz’s disrespect towards her sister an issue.
Chris
@Violet:
This.
They can react one of two ways; 1) “Now that it’s happened to someone I know it’s a real thing, so I just became pro gay rights” and 2) “Abomination!” The latter way finds more favor with the 27%, of course, but the former isn’t unheard of.
Suffern ACE
She’ll do anything for your votes, including publicly shit on family members – when has that ever gotten votes?
Betty Cracker
@Ash Can: I’m not saying it’s an effective strategy, but I find it impossible to believe that two close sisters who grew up in politics, have worked together on campaigns and confronted this very issue during one of Daddy Warbucks’ runs don’t thoroughly know each other’s positions on this issue. I’m sure they’re all terrible people, and I would never doubt a Cheney’s capacity for evil, but there’s just no way they didn’t hash this out years ago.
debbie
@Chyron HR:
The Smothers Brothers defense: “You liked Lizzy best.”
Elizabelle
NYTimes, by Republican whisperer Jonathan Martin:
That sounds serious.
Bitter and Deluded Lurker
@Betty Cracker: I find it entirely possible that one of them is deeply in denial about certain of the other’s positions, and that they never really talk about that issue in any depth.
Feudalism Now!
Liz is just a nasty piece of work. Having a Facebook war with her sister-in-law and sister saying she is a ‘true believer’ in public but a gay marriage supporter in private, does nothing to help her. Liz is following the coloring book version of a conservative race. It is proving to be a mental exercise in how ineptly one can run a race. Darth haz a sad.
aimai
@Joey Maloney: Yeah. If this were a coordinated pro-liz strategy they would have expressed their long term dissapointment that Liz has never supported their gay marriage. They are essentially calling her a hypocrite who privately supports gay people and publicly and for partisan gain pretends not to support them. That will please nobody. I think this is a real expression of enormous pissed-offness on the part of Mary and her wife.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly:
What Violet said, again.
There are homophobes, and there are homophobes. The fire and brimstone set and 27% will be glad Liz smacked her “it’s affront to nature” sister down.
The rest will have a more nuanced view.
Big spaces in Wyoming, and some folks might say “leave other folks alone. Just don’t tax us.”
aimai
@Chyron HR: Good one!
Violet
@Betty Cracker: Working together on Daddy’s campaign is not the same thing as supporting your sister in her campaign. Plus, that was quite a few years ago, when gay marriage wasn’t legal anywhere, or maybe only in MA, so Real Murkins didn’t have much experience with it. Now it’s all over the place and attitudes have changed. Mary Cheney being more okay with being quiet during Daddy’s campaign ten years ago than during her sister’s campaign now is not surprising.
Elizabelle
@geg6:
I know. This is so messy, and there’s no clear path for Liz, not that we want to see her succeed any way.
Brew some more coffee and pass the popcorn.
aimai
@Violet: I really agree with Violet here. In addition: you can’t sufficiently demonstrate your brutality to the hard core/homophobic/evangelical base without going the extra mile and publicly attacking your sinning relatives personally. Its not enough for those people that you merely reject your sister and her wife–its not real unless you fly to DC and slap them in the face, or champion their deaths. Just saying you oppose their right to be married, and retroactively shitting on the family events you have already attended, isn’t enough for true believers.
Anya
They’re all horrible people. Mary Cheney is as shitty as the rest of her horrible family and she will not get any sympathy from me.
JPL
@Anya: Some of us just like good news for people who like bad news about the Cheney’s.
Ash Can
@Betty Cracker: I would never doubt a Cheney’s capacity for duplicity, either. Evidently, Liz, like her father, will do anything — anything — to attain/retain political power. Maybe Mary’s saying “I told you so” to Heather behind the scenes, but Heather — who hasn’t grown up in the toxic Cheney environment — appears genuinely pissed.
the Conster
That anyone in this family gets to live and breathe clean air and enjoy the sunshine on their face proves that god does not exist.
Elizabelle
Here’s pertinent section of the Fox News Sunday transcript, and it seems to me pretty innocuous.
That’s what incensed Mary and Heather? It’s not fire and brimstone, and I am surprised to see Liz Cheney supporting health benefits for same sex couples.
I’d be surprised if Liz hasn’t said this time and time again, during her campaign. Why now for the Facebook feud? What did they expect her to say?
NotMax
Wyoming was where Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten and abandoned to die.
Hoping someone in “The Equality State” asks Ms L. Cheney about that sometime.
Elizabelle
@NotMax:
Now they’re trying to make Shepard’s death all about he was involved in drugs.
More from the Fox transcript:
So, she’s railing against the federal government, while parked within it in various agency jobs, and hers is very important experience for being a U.S. Senator, more than actually being a U.S. Senator.
There is no rationale for Liz’s campaign, save her personal ambition. And “send me there to be mean.”
Ash Can
@Elizabelle: I believe the Facebook feud has been simmering for a while, and I’m sure the situation behind the scenes has been simmering for much longer than that. Cheney pere didn’t exactly stand up for gay rights during his 8 years of running the George W shitshow. This seems to me more a situation of patience wearing thin, especially on Heather’s part, than anything else.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
Sad to say that only 5 Republicans in the Senate voted aye for the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Act (signed by Obama in 2009), and Enzi was not one of them.
Citizen_X
@Elizabelle: Nice. “I sucked at the government teat, and now I’m going to destroy it because, hey, IGMFY.”
@Elizabelle: Ugh. The fact that I’m even reading about the Cheneys’ holiday plans makes me gag. The only thing I want to read is “…but the shrimp salad was spoiled and they all died,” bad person that I am.
Botsplainer
@the Conster:
If the entire extended clan died in a fire, the world would be a better place.
aimai
@Elizabelle: The sense I got from the FB comments is that they are sick and tired of her shit. My guess is that Liz planned on running a stealth campaign in Wyoming, winning, and keeping anything she ahd to do or say in Wyoming in Wyoming and not letting it interfere with her Washington Persona. The Wyoming struggle is harder and more national than she wants it to be–she’s using the national press to try to push Enzi and win in Wyoming. But that just puts her strategy and her dirty laundry right in her sister’s face and her sister and sister in law are tired of letting her run this two faced strategy on them with their kids (and the kids are, presumably, older).
The entire Cheney family and this style of Republican has always acted like the rules don’t apply to them. They are always willing to champion laws and lectures that they know for a fact won’t affect them, just the hoi polloi. I think that Liz thought she could keep politics out of family because Mary and Heather would understand that you do and say what you need to to get over on the rubes and you just do what you want in your private life. But they don’t feel that way anymore because they don’t want to be the country and family’s dirty little secret anymore. They live a public life, their marriage is recognized and they are damned if they will let Liz get away with pretending they don’t exist for the purposes of getting the evangelical vote in Wyoming.
the Conster
@Botsplainer:
If they all died in a fiery sinkhole like the one in This Is The End I’d start going to church that day.
Elizabelle
@Ash Can:
I would prefer Dick Cheney did no roaming at all, but rather be confined to a secure cell with a metal toilet. For life.
However, he’s apparently been more supportive of gay rights in recent years. I guess his warmongering against browns gave him cover for this, per Jonathan Martin in NYTimes:
From the Atlantic item in dpm’s blogpost:
From Martin’s NYTimes piece:
aimai
Also: Liz has inherited her father’s use of the word “frankly” which should always make everyone listening clap their hands to their wallets and check the silver. He (and she) always uses the word “frankly” right before they say something that is patently untrue or unreasonable. Its a tell.
JPL
@Citizen_X: Well that would be good news!
handsmile
@Elmo:
Congratulations and best wishes to you and your spouse! What an inspiring commitment! Sorry to read that true love seems to mean so little to your brothers.
As for the Cheney clan, I won’t pollute this reply by writing what fate I hope befalls each and every one of them. Your final sentence is an adequate paraphrase.
Amir Khalid
You have to have your plausible denials prepared in advance for when you shiv someone close to you. Otherwise people will see it, and then there’ll be no denying anything. Liz Cheney doesn’t seem to have the politicking chops to win this. She should quit now, and spare herself from certain humiliation. But fortunately for Wyoming’s Schadenfreude reserves, she’ll probably stay to the bitter end of the primary.
Elizabelle
@aimai:
I think you’re right.
And I thought this passage in Heather’s post was brilliant:
Touches on the Dred Scott decision, and the story from 12 Years a Slave, and points out how Liz is on the wrong side of history.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
The Cheneys are a coupla trailers away from pure white trash.
SiubhanDuinne
@aimai: I first noticed the “frankly” tic with Newt Gingrich, but the Cheneys have turned it into an art form.
jibeaux
I don’t think it’s strategic. Strategic would be if she convinced Mary and Heather to say “hey, we agree to disagree on this one” and otherwise staying quiet. Call me Pollyanna, but I don’t think even in a Republican primary in Wyoming do you want to make your conservative bona fides via a very public family feud about how you came to their wedding, you stayed at their home, you welcomed her into the family and now you’re turning your back on them. It’s just too ugly.
Also, Heather’s response to me has the vibe of someone who is genuinely offended. Probably, they were asked for their support and for some kind of “agree to disagree” statement, like how racists reach out to those best black friends they have for backup.
beltane
Liz Cheney induces a gag reflex in most conventional Americans; even, it seems, among Wyoming Republicans.
jibeaux
@Elizabelle: Also touches on how Liz is a Johnny-come-lately doing a little district-shopping in coming back to Wyoming.
Ash Can
@Elizabelle:
Sure. He’s not in office anymore. He can afford to be more supportive.
To clarify, I don’t mean to be, and don’t feel as though I am, arguing with you or anyone else here. While I doubt that this Cheney family kerfluffle has been choreographed from beginning to end — there’s been duplicity and hypocrisy on this issue within the family for years — I certainly agree with everyone here that this now-more-public feud does nothing more than give Liz and her family a(nother) black eye — and a richly deserved one it is too.
Elizabelle
@jibeaux:
Yeah, I loved that.
Liz chose to mix it up with people smarter than she is.
scav
@Elizabelle: The Heather Poe thing explicitly brought up moving too. Nice little “carbetbagger” knife twist in the undertone.
aimai
@SiubhanDuinne: Oh, yes, I forgot! I agree with you that Newt is the one whose frankleys are the most disturbing and historically prior to Cheneys.
Betty Cracker
Well, if it is a strategy, it’s a crappy one. I’m possibly unable to fathom the Cheney sisters not hashing this out because of my personal experience: My sister and I are close; she is gay and we’ve talked about gay rights issues from personal and political perspectives since we were children. Of course, we’re not evil spawn from a hellish union, so the situations aren’t 100% analogous…
hoodie
@aimai: Yeah, my dad always hated that one, like “so all the other times you were bullshitting me?”
Amir Khalid
Almost off-topic, but not quite: I’d say this man‘s chances of becoming Canada’s PM are about as good as Liz Cheney’s chances of becoming the next US Senator from Wyoming.
EconWatcher
I kinda wonder if, even among antigay people, the spectacle of a politician publicly turning on her own sister might give pause. There’s something deep inside that recoils at this, and I’m not sure politics–even raging wingnut politics–would override it.
rikyrah
family is family.
Liz is swine, and I can’t imagine Wyoming folks looking kindly on being dismissive of family like this.
aimai
This is what the good christians said about Mary Cheney’s first pregnancy, in 2006–that child is now about six or seven(depending on when she was actually born) and the next child is three years younger. I don’t think I’d forgive my sister if she sided with these people:
beltane
@EconWatcher: Liz Cheney’s behavior might resonate more with the anti-gay true believers if there was any evidence at all that she herself was a true believer in anything but “What’s good for Liz”. As it is, she comes across as the cheapest sort of mercenary, ready to stab anyone or anything in the back on the slightest pretext.
Ramiah Ariya
You know, keeping with the NYT’s objective reporting policies, they should call Heather the “disputed” wife of Mary.
handsmile
@ Amir Khalid (#67)
True, but, putting aside the pesky issue of citizenship, how likely would his chances be of becoming the next senator of Wyoming or of one of several other states from Real America?
After all, someone with his temperament and physical attributes (if not recreational habits) is currently the frontrunner, among the Village bookies, for the 2016 GOP horse race.
Tone in DC
@Amir Khalid:
Tell me that was originally from the Onion.
His mental dysfunction is worse than I thought. That is strong shit he’s smoking.
Librarian
I know nothing about Wyoming politics, but it seems to me that in a libertarian, live-and-let-live state like Wyoming, being rabidly anti-gay can only get you so far and may backfire.
shelly
Among pols, the one vocal tic that always drove me crazy was McCain’s ‘my friends.’
Elizabelle
@aimai:
From Dr. Paul Cameron:
Really? No, not really.
Fact sheet on Dr. Paul Cameron: He’s a Ph.D., not a physician, and the American Psychological Association, the Canadian Psychological Association, and the American Sociological Assn don’t want anything to do with him.
About right for the credentials of a Family Research Institute expert.
UC Davis does not like Mr. Cameron.
scav
@handsmile: but i doubt the fatboy manic intervention-needed-here publicity-seeking vibe is what is really pushing Mr NJ’s numbers with actual voters — I’m thinking the cooperation Sandy thing pulled in some pursuadables. The current media swoons harder for swirling contovery-tossers, right along with the truly rabid but for different reasons. Boris J seems to be managing the manic weirdo politician style best for some inexplicable reason. But fatboy from the north? another pet rock that thinks he’s a real boy.
aimai
@Elizabelle: Its a measure of how far and fast the country has come that that weird anti-Lesbian screed seems even more crazy now than it did in 2006. I also think that it falls into some kind of cultural memory hole–lets call it a vagenda–in which the far right itself turned towards the demonization of primarily male sexual activity and kind of decided to forget all about lesbians when they couldn’t make much of a dent in Ellen Degneres’ popularity.
Elizabelle
@aimai:
Vagenda? I love it.
tybee
@Elizabelle:
+1
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Betty Cracker:
Years ago, Mary wasn’t married with kids. Kids who are going to inherit her half of the Cheney money, rather than the “bachelor sister” leaving it to Liz’s kids after she goes.
aimai
@Elizabelle: Its from Fringe. My favorite TV show. But I have definitely found it to be useful.
Joey Maloney
@Elizabelle:
AND, as someone pointed out over at TBogg’s new digs, ALSO reminds everyone that Liz is a carpetbagger. “BOOM! Campaign over”
Suffern ACE
@Betty Cracker: Whether she has a lesbian sister who is married, unmarried, dates former Sandinistas turned Iranian agents really has nothing to do with Liz. People who are opposed to same sex marriage can vote for Mike Enzi AND be represented by someone who lives in Wyoming.
kc
@Anya:
My sentiments exactly. Mary campaigned for Bush’s second term, when Rove used gay marriage as a wedge issue. To hell with all of them.
Cervantes
@SiubhanDuinne: Funny.
But I know you didn’t really need any “tells” or “tics” to figure out when Cheney or Gingrich was lying.
handsmile
@scav:
There was a wee bit of hyperbole in my comment, but I don’t think you should discount just how enthralling the “fatboy manic intervention-needed-here publicity-seeking vibe” is to American conservatives and the Villagers who enable them. How else to account for Rush Limbaugh’s reign?
And just when does the “colorful” Mr. Johnson come up for re-election? With NYC’s Emperor Bloomberg now seeking new conquests, a campaign for London’s mayoralty could be tempting (he already has a “flat” there, after all).
Lex
Their Thanksgiving dinner conversation should be interesting, anyway.
scav
@handsmile: Attractive to the out and loud fringers, I thought I had acknowledged that. So, good for primaries. I’m less convinced that’s a good long term play for generals, where there might be a bit of an enough already movement in that large part of the electorate that doesn’t attract the fawning media.
As for clashes with carpet-baggers in the UK, I entirely hesitate to speculate, although I somehow doubt any cross-puddle allure would resonate.
Cervantes
@Ramiah Ariya: Excellent idea — and of course, it will never occur to anyone at the NYT.
scav
@kc: It’s a discussion involving Cheneys. Necessarily at best a trifling rearrangement of circles in the Inferno.
Dick Cheney
C’mon girls! These rats aren’t going to fuck themselves, you know!
GregB
Liz is going to lose this election by 40 points and that will snuff any further political aspirations in the crib.
A more deserving political defeat than any I can think of to this point.
The Cheney’s are really horrible people. The entire fucking family doesn’t have a single redeemable quality. The family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre was more loveable than this pack of crumb-bums.
handsmile
@scav:
Oh, I think we’re almost entirely in agreement here, though for me any policy distinction between “out and loud fringers” and the present-day Republican party leadership is one without much difference.
And while I wish no such ill fortune to be visited upon Londoners (excepting of course Roman Abramovich and Chelsea F.C.), I prefer that to be Bloomberg’s next pursuit rather than his purchasing the NY Times from the Sulzberger family (a rumor with some credibility).
ETA: The eighth or ninth circle, as currently designated, should suit them just fine. :)
aimai
@GregB: Not only will she lose, but this has to be quite a reality slap in the face for the Cheney family. Did they not see this coming? You’d have to really not understand politics at all to think that Wyoming voters were going to turn on Enzi. I mean: theoretically it might have worked to run “an” outsider against Enzi as too long in Washington–but in practice Carpetbagger Liz Cheney was never the woman to pull it off and that should ahve been obvious. It just goes to show how much of Cheney the elder’s life was spent in bureaucratic infighting with other admin drones and timeservers. Real electoral politics in a small state doesn’t work this way at all. You can’t just decide on your story line and enforce it through a compliant media. They thought of running Liz like they thought about putting boxes with “MADE IN USA” behind Bush–a series of photo ops that they could control. But real electoral politics just aren’t like that at all. Ditto for the lesbian kerfuffle. Sometimes you can’t even get your made-for-popular-consumption-poll tested lines out before some actual person shits all over them just as publicly.
SFAW
@the Conster:
Hey, at least they’re trying to change that.
But WTF have YOU done? Conserved energy? Driven a high-MPG vehicle? Not been wasteful? Damn commie.
Jay C
@Elizabelle:
Agree that that FOX interview was fairly bland from the social-agenda point: I noticed, though, that Liz Cheney – terminally tone-deaf though she and campaign team seem to be – does concentrate (or appear to want to concentrate) on the main issue of importance to the PTB in Wyoming: i.e. exploitation of resources with minimal regulation and maximum profiteering for the exploiters. Tidily wrapped in stock “anti-Big Government” boilerplate, of course. One just has to wonder, though, if these sort of policies aren’t what Sen. Enzi pushes, anyway: as I see it, just one less reason to vote for Liz Cheney. As if more are needed…
chopper
any wacky gambit is pretty stupid when you’re behind by 50 points, but one that involves publically shitting on your own sister is especially stupid.
nothing says ‘serious’ like ‘i’m having a facebook feud with my sister’.
neoconstantine
While I read this, my dark side whispered to me that if dick’s heart were to stop, maybe during a vicious fight between his evil daughters at Thanksgiving dinner, and he died in abject fear and emotional pain with his face in the gravy boat that would be kind of a good thing. My sunny side is ashamed of my dark side for thinking this.
Jay C
@aimai:
And just to pile on some more: the Liz-Cheney-for-Senate campaign seems not to have considered the local WY GOP organization(s) – with whom, I gather, Mike Enzi has been tight with for years – to be of much account. Which is odd, since being from there, Dick Cheney, at least, ought to know that small-state Party machines tend to have more influence over the electoral process than they do in more populous areas: nailing down at least some local support among the “pros” should have been the first thing they did (they may have, but it sure doesn’t look like it).
VOR
@Jay C: The last time Dick Cheney ran for office in Wyoming was 1988 – twenty five years ago. That is a geological epoch.
He primarily lived in Washington DC and Texas during his tenure as SecDef, CEO of Halliburton, and VP. Liz has spent her adult life in DC. I find it quite plausible that they would have little understanding or experience with the local Wyoming party machine.
DJ
“The only thing I can conclude is [Mary] is not a good man,”
dianne
When someone starts a sentence with “Look” I immediately discount everything they say.
I think part of the problem with Mary and Heather is, the kids are getting older and becoming more aware of their family’s dysfunction. They have to draw a line at some point or risk their children’s disrespect. Plus the cousins will begin to add their two cents into the mix at some point parroting what they hear from their parents. What a web they have woven.
Ben L
When you marry into a family full of bigoted republican homophobic politicians, you’re not allowed to be shocked when they act like… well themselves.
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Good point. Hadn’t thought of that.
Paul in KY
@aimai: She (the Cheney spawn running) has no charisma either. She makes the Mrs. Coulter character from ‘The Compass’ series seem like Mary Poppins.
Paul in KY
@neoconstantine: My sunny side thinks that stuff about the Cheneys. I better not write what the dark side wishes…
Elizabelle
@dianne:
very good point
Seanly
That Liz doesn’t even reach the 27% threshold says a lot about the Cheney name.
West of the Rockies
I’ve posted this observation before, but I DO truly hope that this experience is causing Liz Cheney genuine misery. I hope she is faced with the indisputable fact that she is not well-liked even by her own “tribe”. I hope she has a dark night of the soul and maybe, just possibly, might actually eventually grow a little from the experience. Yeah, I know THAT won’t happen, but one can wish.
Snarki, child of Loki
Yeah, that “name recognition” thing cuts both ways.
Perhaps Liz needs to change her name to “Liz Voldemort” and hope people forget about her family.
Patricia
I imagine Dick Cheney is envious of those lesser Bushes, with their multiple boys and dynasty cred. And the trend does point to a female president in the not too distant future. Just saying.