The editor of a prominent progressive magazine has suggested that Liz Cheney’s political pressure group may be a bogus front that gives news networks an excuse to put the younger Cheney on TV.

The only reason that Liz Cheney makes it on the news talk show rounds is that “she’s Dick Cheney’s daughter,” and her political pressure group is little more than an excuse “so that there is some putative reason, other than being Dick Cheney’s daughter, to put her on the TV,” Nation Washington editor Chris Hayes told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

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“There is no earthly reason that anyone should be listening to Liz Cheney on anything, other than the fact that she is the progeny of an alleged war criminal,” Hayes told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Monday night.

Hayes said it’s virtually impossible to track down what the younger Cheney’s political pressure group, KeepAmericaSafe.com, has been doing and spending.

“I‘m trying to find on the Internet if there is any tabulation of actually how many points … they‘ve purchased of advertising, because it‘s very unclear how much they‘ve actually spent and where. And that‘s incredibly hard to come by. I couldn‘t find it anywhere,” Hayes said.

This isn’t the first time that Cheney’s group has been accused of being a fraud. In October, radio host Bill Press said that the group is “a total media creation.”

Maddow and Hayes were discussing the younger Cheney’s appearance on ABC’s This Week, in which host George Stephanopoulos played a Web-only KeepAmericaSafe ad attacking President Obama for waiting three days to address the Christmas Day attempted bombing. Stephanopoulos pointed out that President George W. Bush waited six days to respond to “shoe bomber” Richard Reid’s attempt to blow up an airliner in 2002.

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“Well, I think that you’ve got to go back here and look at the way this president has dealt with terrorists since he’s been in office, and the point [was] … you cannot win a war if you’re treating it as an inconvenient sideline,” Cheney responded.

“What a rhetorical duck, it’s like she didn’t even hear the question,” Maddow said after playing a clip of the interview. “She just completely ignores the question about the double standard for Bush and Obama, just completely ignores it.”

Questions about Cheney’s political pressure group, KeepAmericaSafe.com, “are mounting,” Maddow said, pointing to a documentary the group put out about Standish, Michigan, a small town ostensibly being pressured into accepting Guantanamo inmates — despite the fact the city council voted unanimously to ask for Gitmo detainees to be sent there.

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“So far, the Liz Cheney pressure group has demanded to debate people who are perfectly willing to debate her, but she wont do it,” Maddow said. “They have tried to get us to pity the poor pushed-around people of a small town in Michigan who asked for what Cheney wants us to pity them for; and they’ve attacked President Obama for something that President Bush did. If that were my record, I’d want to be good at ducking questions too.”

This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Jan. 11, 2010.

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