Liz Cheney: Get Over 2012 And Start Embracing Romneyism
Published
There's no shortage of enthusiasm among conservatives to move past the 2012 election and fix the manifold problems facing the conservative movement. However, this eagerness on the part of conservatives for a Republican resurgence isn't matched by a willingness to actually alter the self-destructive behaviors that have marginalized the right. Liz Cheney joined up with this “cry change but do nothing” crowd in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that counsels conservatives to move past 2012 and start fighting President Obama... with the exact same arguments and talking points used by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
Put them side-by-side, and the daylight between Cheney's op-ed and the Romney-Ryan campaign just about disappears.
| Liz Cheney: "[Obama] believes that more government borrowing and spending are the solution to every problem." | Romney-Ryan: “The president has the same old answers as in the past: he wants another stimulus, he wants more government workers, and he wants to raise taxes.” -- Mitt Romney |
| Liz Cheney: "[Obama] seems unaware that the free-enterprise system has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system devised by man." | Romney-Ryan: “Redistribution of wealth undermines the true sources of America's prosperity and progress: our entrepreneurial people and our free enterprise system. Mitt Romney understands that. He knows that American free enterprise has lifted more people out of poverty than any government program in history.” -- Romney campaign surrogate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) |
| Liz Cheney: “Perhaps [Obama's] ignorance of that fact explains his hostility toward the private sector.” | Romney-Ryan: “The fact is every time they attack Mitt Romney for his experience in the private sector, they reinforce the idea that President Obama is hostile to the private sector.” -- Romney campaign senior adviser Ed Gillespie |
| Liz Cheney: "[Obama] has launched a war on religious freedom." | Romney-Ryan: “President Obama used his health care plan to declare war on religion, forcing religious institutions to go against their faith.” -- Romney campaign ad |
| Liz Cheney: "[Obama] has launched a war on fossil fuels." | Romney-Ryan: “Obama wages war on coal while we lose jobs to China.” -- Romney campaign ad |
| Liz Cheney: "[Obama] doesn't believe in creating a bigger pie with more opportunity for all. He believes in greater redistribution of a much smaller pie." | Romney-Ryan: “Our job is not to fight over a shrinking pie in redistributed slices, our job as leaders is to grow the pie so that everybody has a better shot at the American dream, and everybody can pick themselves up.” -- Paul Ryan |
| Liz Cheney: “If you're unsure of what this America would look like, Google 'Cyprus' or 'Greece.'” | Romney-Ryan: “We've gone from $10 trillion of national debt to $16 trillion of national debt. If the president were re-elected, we'd go to almost $20 trillion of national debt. This puts us on a road to Greece.” -- Mitt Romney |
Cheney also wrote that Obama has “diminished American strength abroad,” argued that the president “has turned his back on America's allies around the world,” and offered the now almost rote broadside over the Benghazi attack -- all themes and arguments borrowed from Romney's 2012 campaign. On top of all that, Cheney kicked off her allegedly forward-looking column with a quote from... Ronald Reagan. And not just any quote: an excerpt from Reagan's anti-“socialized medicine” diatribe on behalf of the American Medical Association, recorded in 1961.
Cheney's recycling routine was so blatant that even Fox News called her out on it. “You specifically list off some of these criticisms of the administration as a way to further define what you think Republicans should stand for,” Fox host Jenna Lee told Cheney on the March 29 edition of Happening Now. “But these complaints we've heard before over the years, and still the president was reelected. So why keep going back to them if they haven't been effective for the Republican party?” Cheney brushed off the question, answering that “certainly you can't say that our values are not effective” even if Republicans failed to communicate them during the election.
There's the Liz Cheney call to arms -- cry Reagan and let slip the dogs of Benghazi ACORN socialism.