Liz Cheney: Taking flak from the right as well as the left

Like her father before her, Liz Cheney has become a political lightning rod. No surprise, perhaps, but now the sparks are coming from the right as well as the left.

On her “Keep America Safe” website and through conservative media, the former vice president’s daughter most recently has been hammering away at Justice Department lawyers who previously represented Guantánamo detainees.

The “Al Qaeda Seven,” she calls them, portrayed in silhouettes alongside a photo of Osama Bin Laden and with creepy background music. (More Monitor reporting on the Cheneys' attacks on Obama here.)

Shades of 'Tail-Gunner Joe'

This has brought pushback from the left, naturally, generally boiling down to charges of “McCarthyism.”

Writing at Salon, Glenn Greenwald calls the “Al Qaeda Seven” video by Cheney’s group “certainly one of the more repugnant political ads of the last decade, if not the most repugnant.”

“Joseph McCarthy himself couldn’t have done a better job of using fear and insinuations to smear his political enemies,” said People For the American Way president Michael Keegan. “Most Americans understand that McCarthyism was a shameful chapter in American history, but the Cheney wing of the Republican Party seems to have embraced Senator McCarthy’s utter lack of shame.”

But the ad is being criticized from the right as well, including those who have served in Republican administrations. (The Monitor's Linda Feldmann explored whether Dick Cheney is helping or hurting the GOP. Click here.)

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