Liz Cheney makes huge leap towards Congress as new Republican dynasty is born

Her father’s shadow has barely lifted from Washington but, barring the unexpected, Liz Cheney, will soon be coming to town as Wyoming’s lone member of the House of Representatives.

Ms Cheney, 50, a rigid conservative who shares the hawkish foreign policy positions of her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, but has also voiced support for Donald Trump, swept away the opposition to win the Republican primary in Wyoming’s sole House district.

With registered Republicans far outnumbering Democrats in the Cowboy State, there is every chance that come the general election Ms Cheney will be sent to Washington for the first time.

Thus, the Cheney political dynasty will formally be born. Moreover, if Mr Trump loses to Hillary Clinton in November, many conservatives who will by then have despaired of him may look to her to become their new standard-bearer in Washington, as a woman who very evidently shares their views, including on social policies, and also someone with high name recognition.

A former Fox News commentator and a State Department official during the George W Bush presidency, Ms Cheney won 40 per cent of the vote in Tuesday’s primary, almost 20 points ahead of her nearest rival. She crushed her opponents by assailing President Barack Obama, especially his energy policies, which have helped depress Wyoming’s coal industry.

She also ripped regularly into the current administration on foreign policy. “Our freedom is under assault from an out-of-control federal government and our security is under threat from radical Islamic terrorism,” she declared earlier this week.

Her internationalist, even neoconservative, views on foreign policy, actually puts her at odds with Mr Trump, who has advocated a more isolationist, ‘America First’, approach.

“The United States, since the end of World War II, has played a role unlike any other nation in the history of the world in terms of the defense of freedom, in terms of the security and peace of the world, and our own security depends upon it,” Ms Cheney said. “That’s what I believe in.”

As much as Mr Cheney is revered by many on the right of the Republican Party, he is loathed by most Democrats and liberals who believe he bears a special responsibility for steering the United States (and with it Britain) into the Iraq War in 2003.

Unsurprisingly Ms Cheney has never evinced any reservations about her father’s legacy. His own career was launched by winning election to the US House from Wyoming in 1979. He remained in the House for ten years, then going on to be Secretary of Defense for former President George H W Bush. He had been tasked to vet candidates to be George W Bush’s running mate in 2000 when the nominee instead chose him to join the ticket.

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“Certainly we've been served well by many people in Washington, and it is very special to have been nominated to serve in the seat that my dad held,” Ms Cheney remarked.

In a 2014 biography of former George H W Bush by Jon Meacham, the former president is cited as saying he did not recognise Mr Cheney once he became his son’s Vice President saying he had become a “hard ass” especially in his response to 9/11. He intimated that his wife, Lynne Cheney, may have had something to do with the transformation. Other’s have speculated that the push of Mr Cheney to the right may also have come from his daughter, Liz.

The family suffered some awkward internal strife when Ms Cheney made an unsuccessful run at one of Wyoming’s two US Senate seats in 2013. In that campaign, she continued to stick by her opposition to gay marriage even though her sister, Mary Cheney, is a lesbian who married her partner in 2012.

Mr Cheney has surprised some of his Republican peers by signaling support for Mr Trump as the party nominee, but many believe he has done so because of his daughter’s political future. She has endorsed the New York billionaire, in spite of her differences with him on foreign policy.

"Right now there is no question that Trump is the better choice,” she said in an interview with the Washington Post last week. “He’s somebody who will probably shake things up”.