Dick Cheney Slams Sen. Mike Enzi on Fundraising, Says They Aren’t Fishing Buddies
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Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Sunday on This Week, former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney slammed the man his daughter Liz Cheney is challenging for his Wyoming Senate seat — Republican Sen. Mike Enzi — calling out the three-term senator for his political fundraising and his characterization of their relationship.
“Mike has a record, if you go back and review his finances, of getting about 84 percent of his campaign funds from Washington-based PACs. That’s more than any senator of either party. He doesn’t get much money from Wyoming,” Cheney told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on This Week Sunday. “In the quarter just reported, Liz got 25 percent of her funds from Wyoming; he got 13 percent of his from Wyoming. She outraised him in the last quarter, over a million dollars in the first quarter out there.”
Cheney also took Enzi to task for saying that the pair are fishing buddies in an interview this week with The Daily Beast.
“Mike also said he and I are fishing buddies, which is simply not true. Never happened,” Cheney said.
Despite being behind in the polls and gaining little support from Republicans in Washington, Cheney said his daughter had “just started” in the race and would eventually prevail in the final vote next year.
“She’s going full speed. She’s going to win and Washington isn’t going to decide who’s the next senator from Wyoming — Wyoming is,” Cheney said.
Cheney also weighed in on the current state of the Republican party, saying that Republicans “got whipped” in the 2012 election and can’t write off certain parts of the electorate.
“I think we have got a long way to go, obviously, to rebuild the party. I think it’s very important that we bring in a new generation of leadership,” Cheney said. “I think after the presidential election last year, you know, we got whipped. A lot of us thought we were going to pull it out. And that didn’t happen. And we clearly need to spend time and effort on building the base, building the party, making it a full-time, professional operation in terms of the RNC. There’s a lot of work to be done, no question about it.”
“We need to do it all. They can’t say, ‘Well, we’re going to write off that group or we’ll write off that segment.’ We’ve got to have first-class candidates. I think we’re making progress,” he added.
Cheney seemed to express optimism about the GOP’s chances in the next presidential election, saying the Republicans are not in an unfamiliar spot.
“I’m not going to predict at this point or endorse anybody. We’ve got a long way to go to the next presidential election. But we have been there before. It’s not the first time we have had to go down this road and it’s basically, I think, healthy for the party to, you know, to be brought up short, and say, ‘Okay, now it’s time to go to work and we need to look to our basic strategy, our personnel,'” he said.
“And as I say, I feel very strongly about it’s time to get a new generation involved,” Cheney said.
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