UM, MAYBE THE GOP WON'T BE ABLE TO SUPPRESS THE CRAZY IN 2016

Liz Cheney announced today that he's challenging incumbent Republican Mike Enzi for the Wyoming Senate seat that's up in 2014. This is not making everyone on the right happy -- over at Power Line, where in 2009 you could read not one but two posts urging Liz to run for president in 2012, there is distress:

Perhaps ... she will be able to articulate a compelling rationale for her candidacy. But for now, this looks like exactly the kind of primary challenge that conservative Republicans should not be mounting. Cheney is neither significantly more conservative than Enzi nor significantly more electable; her real advantage as a primary candidate is that she is significantly more glamorous. That isn't enough.

Hot Air's Allahpundit is also not with the program:

I'm just not clear on why she'd necessarily be a significant upgrade over him. She's known mainly for being a super-hawk in the mold of her dad, but super-hawkishness (as distinct from hawkishness) was, I thought, momentarily out of fashion among grassroots conservatives. McCain and Graham are the two Republicans in Congress most loathed by the base, in part because of their penchant for interventionism, but Cheney presumably will be right there with them on foreign policy in the Senate. Some people seem to want Enzi out because he's a multi-term incumbent and the Senate needs "new blood," but how new is the blood when the "insurgent" is the daughter of the last Republican VP?

Or are these just the voices of ... RINOs?

We already knew from an article that ran in The New York Times earlier this month that the Wyoming GOP is not happy that Cheney is running -- but I guess this is the new GOP, a party in which you're deemed impure if you ever work with Democrats, as Townhall's Kurt Schlichter angrily explains:

The Times hailed him as "a studious, low-key legislator who worked well with Senator Edward M. Kennedy," and Enzi probably thinks that's a compliment.

For that reason alone he needs to go.

He needs to go because we can do better. It's not about Mike Enzi or any other Republican politician. It's about winning this war against progressivism, and if you aren't leading the fight then bow out and make room for someone who will.

Liz Cheney ... wants to win. Not to "compromise," not to "work together," not sit around singing "Kumbayah" with the liberals. She wants to win.

Enzi wants to be a sober, serious legislator working with his liberal friends across the aisle to make a better country. Except there are no friends across the aisle, and the liberals do not want to make this a better country. Liberals want to ruthlessly acquire and maintain power and control over every aspect of our lives, and anyone who does not see and understand that and who can't commit to destroying their hideous plans for our country needs to get out the way for a true conservative warrior.

It's interesting that this happened today, because one of the first things I read this morning was a column by Harry Enten arguing that insurgent anger won't give the GOP an extreme presidential nominee in 2016, because GOP voters want to win and GOP power brokers have a lot of control over the process. But does it seem to you as if GOP power brokers are successfully restraining the crazies these days? The apparent refusal of the House to pass real immigration reform is one sign that they're not. Liz Cheney's run is another.

What happens if party power brokers lose even more control? What happens if voters decide that, after the McCain and Romney losses, their most electable candidate is someone who's high on the crazy scale? I think we could get a Ted Cruz nomination -- and maybe he'll run with Liz Cheney. I think the old pattern could hold -- but it really may not this time.