Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol Start ‘Keep America Safe’
Ben Smith has the scoop on Keep America Safe, a new pressure group headed up by former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Liz Cheney. Cheney’s partners are Debra Burlingame and Bill Kristol — whose other new venture, the Foreign Policy Initiative, is only seven months old. And so far, with a snarky video that attacks the president for playing golf too much, the 501(c)4 looks like an activist extension of the Weekly Standard’s smash-mouthing blog, which on Friday nearly collapsed from the weight of Obama-bashing Nobel Prize posts:
“„The group’s mechanics are largely a product of former campaign aides to Senator John McCain: Michael Goldfarb, now a Weekly Standard blogger, is an adviser to the group; its executive director is McCain war room chief Aaron Harison, and the video was produced by Justin Germany, the McCain aide who produced a campaign video titled, “The One,” which mocked Obama as a messianic figure.
Cheney’s constant TV appearances have, so far, been a function of her family name and of the strong possibility that she’ll run for office someday. This effort gives TV hosts something else to say when they introduce her; it will also, says Cheney, publish “memos by Bush Administration lawyers justifying waterboarding and other practices to make the case that they aren’t torture.”
