Liz Cheney: like father, like daughter

Are the Cheneys destined to become a new American political dynasty? It's a question worth asking as the former Vice President's eldest daughter, Liz Cheney, emerges as a rising star of the Republican party.

The 43-year-old lawyer and former State Department official has become a fixture on the right-wing interview and lecture circuit and is now the subject of a New York Times profile. Asked whether she would run for office, she replied: “We’ll see”.

She's certainly a chip off the old block. She defends her father's decision to allow enhanced interrogation techniques on US captives, denying that waterboarding amounts to torture. She has been fiercely critical of Barack Obama, calling him an American president who seems to be afraid to defend America.

As her younger sister, Mary Cheney, said: "I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any daylight at all between Liz's and my father's views. It's not because she’s been indoctrinated. It's because he's right."

Liz, a mother of five, has a growing fan-base. Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin calls herself a Cheney "fan girl," and right-wing blogger Fingers Malloy calls her one of the fresh faces of our movement.

Some question whether Ms Cheney's surname, associated as it is with an aggressive and interventionist foreign policy, is an asset or a liability: she is married to the lawyer Phillip Perry but chooses to use her maiden name. Others question whether there’s room for another ‘go get ‘em’ power-suited heroine of the right. But she seems destined to join Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann – subject of yesterday's First Post cover story - in the Republican soccer mom hall of fame. ·