I am concerned enough about your criticism of Cheney's position on immigration to look it up. After all, that is the kind of national issue which concerns me and being wrong on immigration in the Marco Rubio sense is a flat disqualification ranking right up there with being wrong on abortion.
I found this statement from her quoted by the left:
I wouldn’t have voted for it. I think that there were too many good amendments, for example, that were not accepted, such as those offered by Sen. Cruz, that would have provided much more insurance in terms of border security. I am not comfortable with leaving so much discretion in the hands of the secretary for Homeland Security – to decide whether to carry out those provisions of the bill. And I think the bill as it stands now doesn’t deal with the most important issue we’ve got to address first, which is to secure the border.
( http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/20/liz-cheney-speaks-out-on-her-campaign-for-us-senate/#ixzz2hJAj5bOB)
This is not as strong as I would like but it falls within acceptable limits, although just barely.
Another issue of national importance which concerns to me is whether Liz Cheney is, as has been charged on this thread, a neocon who has not sufficiently repented of our excursions into Iraq and Afghanistan. Parenthetically, it should be noted that Mike Enzi voted for these wars and there is no reason to believe that he has gone out of his way to move toward Rand Paul who, incidentally, supports Enzi. So the question is, do we taint Liz Cheney with the sins of her father?
I have long ago made a full mea culpa on these threads to the effect that I was absolutely wrong about the Iraq war, it is been a disaster for the United States, a disaster of foreign policy proportions, a disaster financially, and a disaster electorally for the Republican Party. Like Senator Enzi, and virtually every other senator, like Vice President Cheney, and no doubt his daughter, I supported the war in Iraq. It is not clear to me whether Senator Enzi or Liz Cheney have repented as much as I have for this mistake.
I am not extremely pleased with Liz Cheney's ambivalent expression concerning immigration. She said she would have voted against it, as did Enzi. A vote is a vote. But it sounds to me like she might, John Cornyn style, well look for a way to vote for it before she votes against it.
In the end it comes down for me to a question whether we can afford to waste an absolutely safe Republican state on a Senator who is sleepwalking through history. On balance, and, as I said in my initial post on this thread, "“I have supported Lynn Cheney in this race not out of overwhelming passion but out of the principle that we ought to summarily execute a few examples to encourage the others."
We have simply got to shake up the Republican Party and Washington. Individual careers no longer are of sufficient consideration, the future of the Republic is really at stake. If Cheney does not measure up, if elected, I would move to throw her ass out too.
Enzi isn’t “sleep walking.” He’s doing what Wyomingites sent him there to do: Represent WYOMING’s interests.
This is another thing that I think most people on FR who are disparaging Enzi don’t realize: Enzi’s political behavior is in keeping with what Wyomingites want. Effective and low-key.
There’s few things that really stick as sideways in people’s craws around here as a politician who has his face on the tube all the time. Our mayor often gets people really annoyed because in the last two years, it seemed he was everywhere. You couldn’t seem to get away from the guy. Some people pulled him aside this summer and said “You know, there’s a bunch of people on the city council who could be doing some of these appearances. They’re being paid too. They can do some of this. If you’re aspiring to anything more, you’d better quit seeming to inject yourself into every aspect of life in the community.”
And he did just that. Now people are more approving again.
People here like the fact we have a part-time legislature. They don’t like feeling that they need to be engaged in politics all the time, with one eye over their shoulders towards Cheyenne or DC. Most people in Wyoming would dearly love Congress to meet for about 90 days a year and then be forced to go home.
The idea that Enzi isn’t good for Wyoming is another media-created trope. Texans might like their senators big and loud, but a guy like Cruz would get tossed out of office after one term here - not because people disagreed with his positions, not because people thought he was intransigent or some other NY Times’ BS. No, it would be because Cruz is just too loud and in front for people’s taste here. If his primary opponent were conservative and lower-key, Cruz would probably be gone.
Back to Cheney: I don’t have the time to write up huge swathes of background on Cheney. I’ve been talking to people here who “hold paper” on people. People who know the Cheney family - and don’t like them all that much. People who will tell you that Dick isn’t a Wyomingite, and the only reason why he’s welcome at all in the state is because he’s married to a Wyoming gal. Unlike other states that have been swamped with huge waves of change in the last 20 to 40 years, Wyoming’s population remains pretty static, owing to our winters’ ability to get rid of people.
The people who stay have been here for decades to generations. And as a result, there are people who have the dirt on various people and families. The Cheneys have stepped on a bunch of toes around the state with this move, and as a result, some of the dirt people have known about is likely to come out. I think you will be seeing more of it eventually seep into the press.
You want to play that “pour encourages les autres” deal? Then get rid of Linda Graham and/or Juan McCain. Want to send a big message on immigration? Take down Rubio. Want to get a more conservative senator into Wyoming? Then go after Barasso.
Taking down Enzi isn’t going to do what you think it is going to do. It would replace a guy who represented his state well as a conservative with a neo-con who was installed by the GOP-e. The message you’d be sending is “the GOP-e can run the show - and they can do it on a low budget.”
That’s not the message I want to send. I especially don’t want to send a message that we’re going to fall for any more neo-con BS.