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.
Half a century ago the left was scratching around for ways to rationalize their support of William Fulbright of Arkansas. On the one hand they loved his anti-Vietnam war stance and his evident gravitas but on the other hand they were appalled by his racism. So they came up with the idea that his racism was the price he reluctantly forced himself to pay in order to keep his seat in Arkansas.
If I were voting in Wyoming I probably would feel much the way you do but as I said in a previous post I am not judging the Senate race on local issues but on national issues which, sadly, under our new post constitutional system emanate from a legislature in Washington that sits for more than 90 days.
I fully agree with you about getting rid of the Lindsay Grahams, McCains and even Rubios. I would not necessarily have targeted Enzi, it was Liz Cheney who did that, but we deal with the slate we are presented with.
The irony of this is that we tend to be harsher with more conservative senators such as Enzi because they come from conservative states where there is little danger of losing the general to the Democrat. We take after Enzi and leave Susan Collins alone?
At any rate you can comfort yourself that I have no vote in Wyoming and so, even though I have a dog in the fight, I have no say.
