Liz Cheney, whose father served as one of the architects of two wars, one of which is unnecessary and which has broken us in terms of blood and treasure, and her father, who had also received five deferments during the Vietnam War, attacked President Obama for greeting our fallen soldiers at the Dover Air Force Base.
Only a Republican could turn a respectful and well-meaning Presidential act into an inappropriate or self-serving one.
How low can they go? Apparently the pit is bottomless, as readers will see later in the post.
Nor should we forget how former CEO Cheney has personally profited enormously from Halliburton's no bid contracts in our federal government's military/industrial war complex.
Veterans over at Daily Kos have much to say about Liz Cheney and her father.
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MSNBC's Rachel Maddow picked up where Lawrence O'Donnell let off on "Chickenhawkette" Cheney.
But the Cheney's arrogance and their disgusting contempt for the truth are not the reason that many moderates are being chased out of the GOP.
No, the moderates are being run off because Palin, Beck, Rush and their far right conservative groupies have taken over the party.
In his piece
The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York
Frank Rich writes:
This week's election to fill that vacant seat has set off nothing less than a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war. No matter what the results in that race on Tuesday, the Republicans are the sure losers. This could be a gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats through 2010, and perhaps beyond.
But, but, but, the pundits in the media have said Republicans can make a big comeback in 2010.
The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement's undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck, neither of whom has what Palin once called the "actual responsibilities" of public office, would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity. Over the short term, at least, their wish could come true.
Speaking of wacko world, Fox's Chris Wallace invited Rush Limbaugh on his Sunday talk show yesterday. I guess this means Rush is indeed one of the real leaders of the GOP. This also tells us what we already knew about Fox.
At any rate, the race in New York has taken an unsuspected turn b/c conservatives do not believe their former Republican candidate is sufficiently conservative.
The New York fracas was ignited by the routine decision of 11 local Republican county chairmen to anoint an assemblywoman, Dede Scozzafava, as their party's nominee for the vacant seat. The 23rd is in safe Republican territory that hasn't sent a Democrat to Congress in decades. And Scozzafava is a mainstream conservative by New York standards; one statistical measure found her voting record slightly to the right of her fellow Republicans in the Assembly. But she has occasionally strayed from orthodoxy on social issues (abortion, same-sex marriage) and endorsed the Obama stimulus package. To the right's Jacobins, that's cause to send her to the guillotine.
The usual suspects entered the scene to set-up their candidate/puppet of choice. When it was all said and done, the moderate candidate had no choice but to suspend her campaign.
The wrecking crew of Kristol, Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, Michele Bachmann, The Wall Street Journal editorial page and the government-bashing Club for Growth all joined the Hoffman putsch. Then came the big enchilada: a Hoffman endorsement from Palin on her Facebook page. Such is Palin's clout that Steve Forbes, Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor (and presidential aspirant), promptly fell over one another in their Pavlovian rush to second her motion. They were joined by far-flung Republican congressmen from Kansas, Georgia, Oklahoma and California, not to mention a gaggle of state legislators from Colorado. On Fox News, Beck took up the charge, insinuating that Hoffman's Republican opponent might be a fan of Karl Marx. Some $3 million has now been dumped into this race by outside groups.
But wacko's world puppet of choice doesn't even live in the district and he knows little of local issues. But hey, who cares about little ol' details like local issues. It is one's ideological purity that matters the most. Apparently Hoffman has proven his muster because he named Glenn Beck as his mentor.
Who exactly is the third-party maverick arousing such ardor? Hoffman doesn't even live in the district. When he appeared before the editorial board of The Watertown Daily Times 10 days ago, he "showed no grasp" of local issues, as the subsequent editorial put it. Hoffman complained that he should have received the questions in advance - blissfully unaware that they had been asked by the paper in an editorial on the morning of his visit.
The far right chose puppet Hoffman because he is a fiscal, government hating conservative. The fact that he thrives on federal pork apparently does not matter to wacko world.
Last week it turned out that Hoffman's prime attribute to the radical right - as a take-no-prisoners fiscal conservative - was bogus. In fact he's on the finance committee of a hospital that happily helped itself to a $479,000 federal earmark. Then again, without the federal government largess that the tea party crowd so deplores, New York's 23rd would be a Siberia of joblessness. The biggest local employer is the pork-dependent military base, Fort Drum.
Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck insist that Republican candidates must take an ideological purity test.
The right's embrace of Hoffman is a double-barreled suicide for the G.O.P. On Saturday, the battered Scozzafava suspended her campaign, further scrambling the race. It's still conceivable that the Democratic candidate could capture a seat the Republicans should own. But it's even better for Democrats if Hoffman wins. Punch-drunk with this triumph, the right will redouble its support of primary challengers to 2010 G.O.P. candidates they regard as impure.
This impure/pure scenario could trickle on down to Texas in the Perry vs. Hutchison race.
That's bad news for even a Republican as conservative as Kay Bailey Hutchison, whose primary opponent in the Texas governor's race, the incumbent Rick Perry, floated the possibility of secession at a teabagger rally in April and hastily endorsed Hoffman on Thursday.
I sure as heck don't have a problem if the right wants to make our progressive's day here in Texas.
Bring it on, righty rights. Bring it on with all guns blazing.
Oh, Ms. Scozzafava, the former New York Republican candidate mentioned above who was forced to suspended her campaign, has endorsed the Democratic candidate. But Rich has a point when he wrote that it would be better if Hoffman won, at least as far as Democrats are concerned. (I feel sorry for the folks in Hoffman's district which is not really his district. As one who has absolutely no representation in the U.S. Congress, I can feel NY's potential pain.) The far right's purity tests and it's destruction of moderate candidates could be the gift that keeps giving for Democrats for years to come.
