Likability is not often thought to be a top concern among immortal men who enjoying starting wars. And yet, according to a bizarre document from Politico this morning, Dick Cheney has been uncharacteristically palling around with GOP operatives in Washington lately, stopping by “conservative writer George Will’s annual spring baseball soiree” for the first time in years, offering to campaign for Republicans this fall, even hosting a “fence-mending” dinner. Mostly for the sake of his favorite daughter, Liz.
Liz Cheney, remember, upset her party mightily when she carpetbagged her way into a Wyoming Senate race against incumbent and onetime family friend Mike Enzi. (Along the way, she called Establishment Republicans the “problem,” and said, “protecting incumbents won’t protect our freedom.”) She eventually dropped out, citing health problems with one of her children, but not before alienating everyone, including her own sister.
Yeah, that’s still awkward:
While the Cheneys have made progress fixing things with the party, the situation between Liz and her sister Mary is less clear. Mary Cheney, who is gay, and her wife, Heather Poe, publicly rebuked Liz Cheney for opposing same-sex marriage in her campaign, saying she was “dead wrong.”
When a POLITICO reporter told Mary Cheney he heard that she and her sister had “buried the hatchet,” she initially responded, “Curious who told you that.” Pressed to elaborate, she wrote that her response was “something I tend to ask whenever I get a vague [question] like ‘someone told me’ and it is regards to me or my family.” She did not comment further.
Meanwhile, Liz and her father are on a dual charm offensive, hitting Fox News to talk Iraq and the op-ed pages to accuse the president of treason. You know, typical father-daughter bonding.
Why? Because “several of Liz Cheney’s friends … say she could well make another bid for elected office,” Politico reports. They’ve also started a new anti-Obama group, Alliance for a Strong America. Oh, and stuck in the middle of the report on the Cheneys’ “recovery tour” is a plug for yet another stop: “On July 14, Dick, Lynne and Liz Cheney will be the marquee names at a POLITICO Playbook lunch event at the Mayflower Hotel.” Now, that’s synergy.
