Liz Cheney….Please Run For Something, Oh, And You, Too, Mary
September 28, 2009 / 5:00 pm • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierLiz Cheney spoke at the Smart Girls Summit in Nashville–alas, I missed it. But I’ve seen her interviewed and she’s got her daddy’s smarts and her mama’s grit. (Her mom is smart, too.) She was featured by the New York Times:
Liz Cheney is “a red state rock star,” declared Rebecca Wales, one of the organizers of this event, the “Smart Girls Summit.”
“The future of the Cheney message,” added a conservative blogger who goes by the name of Fingers Malloy (a rare man in this crowd, and even rarer, one with a Mohawk). He also called her “one of the fresh faces of our movement.”
It is a source of debate whether “Cheney” is an asset or a liability for this 43-year-old lawyer and former State Department official who keeps turning up on TV, at lecterns and in discussions about future Republican candidates. There is also the question of whether the “Cheney message” on national security — which essentially translates to an aggressive and interventionist approach — is something the Republican Party should be trumpeting, or burying.
What is clear is that Ms. Cheney, at a minimum, has become a rallying point for conservative views on national security. In a broader sense, she is being promoted as a rising star of the Republican Party, one who is hardly shying from the Cheney brand. (She is married to the lawyer Phillip Perry, but uses her maiden name.)
Ms. Cheney’s resolute national security positions seem to differ not at all from those of her favorite vice president. “I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any daylight at all between Liz’s and my father’s views,” said her younger sister, Mary Cheney. “It’s not because she’s been indoctrinated. It’s because he’s right.” Mary Cheney was prominent in her father’s vice-presidential campaigns but has drawn fire from some conservatives for having a child as part of a same-sex couple.
Well, I say go Mary and go Liz. Your folks raised you Right. We need plain-spoken, honest conservatives running for office. We need more conservative women running for office.
