Ever get the feeling Liz Cheney is running for something?

That's not the only reason she's shoving herself down our throats, to be sure. She and her father must keep the old man's ass out of jail. The Two Cheneys are suddenly everywhere, 24/7, to build a case that torture and his other crimes really were fine ideas; at least, to blur the line between legitimately defending the country and cavalierly offending all moral standards and sense of reason.

But almost 25 television appearances - covering all the networks - in a month? Jesus! Cable news addicts have seen her more times in the past fortnight than Elvis has been spotted in jerkwater dells over the past three decades! As Greg Sargent notes:

Yet as Steve Benen, David Kurtz, and others have pointed out, Liz Cheney has been granted a near-constant platform on MSNBC to act as her father's chief defender and go after Obama, often without meaningful challenge from either a co-guest or from anchors. They also note that it's unclear what makes her newsworthy enough, in and of herself, to merit all that airtime.

Sargent points out criticism even from Keith Olbermann, who's "Countdown" has helped lift MSNBC's ratings to the point where the network can cut back on some of its endless "Lifestyles of the Jailed and Chatty" programming.

She's proven herself capable and combative. Ooo, is she ever combative. Over the weekend one blogger noted, in an entry entitled "Liz Cheney the Shrew":

During the last half hour, on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, Liz Cheney joined in a discussion with James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute... Cheney kept interrupting Zogby and constantly talked over him while he was trying to speak. It was not a pretty scene. She would not let him finish a sentence. She insisted on getting the last word, and constantly interrupted, no matter what Blitzer said. She was incredibly rude.

I saw some of that interview myself, and from my end of the transmission, it sure didn't look like Blitzer was busting his ass to allow Zogby to make his case. Nobody expects Blitzer to shove a sock in her mouth, but in addition to allowing Cheney to constantly butt in and talk over Zogby's responses, Blitzer kept hurrying him along and cutting him off.

So... defending her father's waterboard fixation is one thing. But this is an awful amount of jawboning for one person. We know by now how excruciatingly "fair" American media insists on appearing whenever they feel a conservative (or, better, neoconservative) has been left out in the cold, a strongly interventionist nose pressed longingly against the newsroom window. Network appearances averaging five a week, however, seem a li'l ridiculous.

Either Cheney and his daughter have a lot of chits they're calling in with American media, or there are bigger suits backing this whirlwind tour. The idea Liz Cheney is running for office has been alive for weeks now.

But... is Liz Cheney running for President?

One way we've been able to discern power blocs on the Right is the degree to which their spokepeople become Fox News stars. And it is on Fox that Liz Cheney has become all but a regular. Murdoch's Moloch loves her company. She's at least as articulate as Chris Wallace, and less fussy and femme than Sean Hannity. Cheney is either News Corp.'s new talking head (a possibility), or they're molding her for something big!

The GOP enjoyed a powerful "eureka moment" with the Sarah Palin / Joe the Plumber phenomenon last year: Portions of the American electorate will listen to a candy apple if you put a microphone in front of it. Substance doesn't matter, especially if the platform you're peddling is as fresh as Sha Na Na, and as attractive as a colonoscopy. Just prop up something new, or something that seems new. Forget about text; many Americans don't really listen to words, they respond to emotions. They're impressed by lots of shouting and fingers banging on tabletops. Anger is good, because it seems - regardless of motivation or intention - strong and right; it imbues any argument with compelling validity, simply via passion and volume. 

Cheney, an attorney, sports a public-service resume pretty much isolated to her nepotistic State Department duties in the Bush Administration - whiling away the past eight years in a Foggy Bottom post created especially for her called Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State For Near Eastern Affairs. In that position, 

...She was given control of the Middle East Partnership Initiative, designed to "foster increased democracy and economic progress in a troubled region." The program spent $29 million in 2002, increased to $129 million in the following year. Cheney's task was to channel money to pre-screened groups, some of which were not identified publicly for fear of retaliations from extant governments they sought to undermine. For the budget year 2004, the project sought $145 million.

Cheney oversaw the launch of two semi-independent foundations, the Fund of the Future (worth $100 million), to provide capital for small businesses and the Foundation of the Future (worth $55 million), to "promote freedom of the press and democracy". On an ominous note, MEPI funding has gone to many countries hosting CIA "black sites", usually deployed as secret prisons that operate outside the legal jurisdiction of the United States, but well within the traditions of Torquemada and Attila the Hun.

Hmm. All that, and overseeing bundles of cash going to groups "not identified publicly" for fear of retaliation - or of publicity fatal to future political ambition. Yep. She sure seems a chip off the old block. And if I wanted to set up farflung terror dungeons, or maybe roving killer ninjas (if that story turns out to be true), I'd want someone close who could access a secret funding mechanism - of public money!

Maybe, with a little help from a compliant media, she can bully her way into more - and more powerful - public service.