Liz Cheney: Are we ready for another political dynasty?

"President Obama has showed no intent or ability to put structural changes into place" that will help control the national debt, she said, according to the Wyoming Business Report.

"He formed the national debt commission … the Simpson-Bowles group … and has ignored their recommendations," she said. "The solution to our problems is a new president." And a strengthened Republican caucus in the House and Senate, she might have added.

Last month, Cheney appeared with her father at the state GOP's convention. It was Dick Cheney's first public engagement since he underwent a heart transplant.

Early in the Obama administration, the two Cheneys tag-teamed the new president over Afghanistan, claiming that he had dithered, meandered, waffled, and “seems afraid.”

(That was before Obama ramped up the number of US troops there, launched hundreds of drone attacks, and took out Osama bin Laden.)

On “Keep America Safe” (the organization she founded), as a Fox News contributor, and elsewhere, she continues to hammer Obama on national security issues, claiming for example that there is “no terrorist Obama is unwilling to release.”

All of which sounds like building a case for one’s candidacy – and a possible antidote to the GOP’s alleged “war on women.”

Is the former Veep urging his daughter to follow in his congressional footsteps? Hard to know, although one can imagine fatherly pride at the notion – and a desire to pass along the benefit of his political experience and wisdom.

"My dad always keeps track of my travels and media performances and gives me advice on how to do better or how to address an issue differently," Ms. Cheney told the Chamber of Commerce group in Casper.

Running for Congress as the child of a former member would not be unheard of or all that unusual.

“For a nation forged by revolution against a hereditary monarchy, America has always had an unusual tolerance for – or even embrace of – political dynasty,” notes Charles Mahtesian, Politico’s national politics editor.

“In his book America's Political Dynasties, scholar Stephen Hess counted some 700 families in which two or more members had served in Congress since 1774 – and that book was published nearly a half-century ago, in 1966,” he writes. “At the moment, there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 members of Congress whose parents also served in Congress, or have a sibling or cousin in Congress, or who succeeded to their husband's seat. And there's more waiting in the wings: Seven sons of congressmen are currently seeking election to the House.”

And perhaps a daughter as well.

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