When Liz Cheney, the outspoken elder daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, announced this month that she was launching a primary challenge against three-term incumbent conservative Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), she declared that it’s “time for a new generation to come to the fore” and “time for us to say to ourselves, ‘Can we continue to go along to get along in Washington?'”
While much attention has focused on the civil war between conservative GOPers in Wyoming, the bigger issue is that Cheney’s quest is symbolic of how the Republican Party has evolved — and where it now seems to be inexorably headed.
Cheney has said it’s time for GOPers to stop “cutting deals” with Democrats — a curious charge since few political analysts would say that today’s Congress is known for its bipartisan deal-making. But Cheney is presenting herself as a Tea Party Republican representing a wave of the future that extends far beyond the Wyoming Senate seat.
Now, the conventional wisdom — and polling — suggest she’s going to lose in Wyoming.
But that’s not a given:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.