You might have missed this, but everyone's most loathed conservative hellspawn, Liz Cheney, had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today and it is a humdinger. But instead of forcing you to read her deranged ramblings, I'll let Jonathan Chait sum it up:
She (and thus, by extension, her father) is obviously stark raving mad.
Ouch. Do go on.
Even after four years of bug-eyed right-wing paranoia, Cheney's op-ed stands out for its utter dearth of the slightest whiff of perspective or factual grounding. President Obama, she tells us, "is the most radical man ever to occupy the Oval Office. He has "launched a war on American's Second Amendment rights." He does not want the economy to grow. ("He believes in greater redistribution of a much smaller pie.") Obama "seems unaware that the free-enterprise system has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system devised by man" - which is odd, because Obama is always saying things like "business, and not government, will always be the primary generator of good jobs with incomes that lift people into the middle class and keep them there." The best approximations of America's future under Obama are tiny European nations that lack control of their own currency. ("If you're unsure of what this America would look like, Google "Cyprus" or "Greece.")
Yep. That's pretty nuts (if fairly standard for Republicans these days). But it's foreign policy, supposedly Liz's area of "expertise" (remember, she was deputy assistant SOS for near eastern affairs under Dubya and Daddy Darth), that she
really gets unhinged:
Obama, she argues, has not only weakened America, he wants to weaken America's world standing in the same way he wants to shrink its economy ("there is no longer a question of whether this was his intent"). He wants to "pre-emptively disarm the United States."
You know, I love
The Manchurian Candidate too, Liz. The difference is, I know it's fiction.
Yep, pretty crazy. But here's where Chait really highlights Liz's craziness and it revolves around a quote from a speech from Ronald Reagan in 1961:
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well-taught lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free."
Strong words. But then Chait reveals what Reagan was talking about here:
There is one confusing passage in here - "this." Reagan warns that "if you and I don't do this," then freedom in America will be extinguished forever. But what is "this?" "This" referred to stopping the enactment of Medicare.
Yep, Medicare. Just like Social Security decades before. Because while the government programs change, the irrational hatred remains the same:
The paranoia is simply transferred from one event to the next. Conservatives likened the establisment of Social Security to socialism and tyranny. Reagan, speaking a quarter-century later, assured his audience that he loved Social Security but that Medicare would surely fulfill those same warnings. Republican now pledge their love for Medicare but see Obamacare as the death knell for freedom.
And since I don't want to let Chait have all the fun, here's
Steve Benen's summation of Cheney's screed:
It's a truly ridiculous tirade with all the sophistication and accuracy of a Breibart commentary section.
Nothing more needs be said. Liz, you so crazy.