Liz Cheney isn’t as obsessed with political power as some of us thought, apparently.
The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Wyoming ended her campaign early today, citing undisclosed family health issues. I wish her and her family well, of course.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/liz-cheney-wyoming-senate-race-101767.html?hp=f1
Another part of me, though, is glad she’s bowing out, if only to restore some sanity to the political process in one of our 50 states.
Cheney is the outspoken daughter of the outspoken former vice president, Dick Cheney. She challenged long-time Wyoming Republican Sen. Mike Enzi for reasons that continue to escape me. She claimed, I guess, that Enzi — one of the Senate’s most conservative members — isn’t conservative enough.
Her candidacy drew immediate fire from the state’s GOP establishment. GOP powerhouses lined up in Enzi’s corner.
Then things turned bad.
Cheney was accused of being a carpetbagger, given that she moved to Wyoming in 2010 after growing up in Washington, D.C. I don’t hold that against her. Two of my favorite carpetbaggers have been Robert F. Kennedy and Hillary Rodham Clinton, both of whom represented New York quite nicely in the Senate. In this age of intense media scrutiny, though, Cheney’s opportunism was drawing unusual attention.
Of course, then we had Cheney getting into that public tiff with her openly gay sister, Mary, over the issue of same-sex marriage. Mary is married and is a mother. Liz opposes gay marriage. The sisters got into a spat that only served to embarrass the entire family.
As Politico.com notes, Cheney’s campaign never got “traction.” Enzi continued to poll far ahead of his upstart challenger.
What this means for the health of the national Republican Party, though, remains to be determined. Liz Cheney is just one challenger to establishment GOP incumbents to drop out. Other insurgents are out there, including a few throughout West Texas, who are mounting challenges to long-time Republican incumbents.
Liz Cheney, though, is out of the game. Good. Her voice, though, won’t be silenced. She’s got her Fox News Channel job waiting for her.