The Edwards Buzz Is Already Fading
A few weeks ago on a desultory afternoon with very little to do, I illustrated that latter condition by blogging about the quadrennial veepstakes, with disproportionate emphasis on the Republican side because of a rumor I’d heard on the radio about the possible dumping of Dick Cheney.
What time I spent on the “raptly anticipated” Kerry choice has been pretty much vindicated by ensuing events. Back then I wrote: “Edwards is an empty suit, his face and hair more or less sprayed out of an aerosol can… forget Edwards tipping North Carolina.” Of course, the partisan media just LOVE empty suits sprayed out of aerosol cans, which explains the orgasmic raptures that accompanied the two Johns wherever they went last week on their honeymoon gropefest. What didn’t accompany “the sunshine boys,” as Newsweek “objectively” dubbed them, was an appreciable bounce in Kerry’s poll numbers. The best that can be said was that the recent decline in the Boston Balker’s standing was halted, and he managed to pull back into a statistical dead heat with the President. Better than nothing, certainly, and perhaps to be expected in our supposedly “50-50” political landscape, but definitely a lot less than the Democrats were hoping for. Oh, yes, and Bush leads Kerry in North Carolina by fifteen points.
So, in other words, the Edwards buzz is already fading, and his “intellectual slovenliness” will come more and more to the fore. Something on which Dick Cheney will feast like Garfield on a lasagna.
Yes, Dick Cheney. Though if you’re gullible enough to use the New York Times for anything other than auxiliary bathroom tissue, you might be thinking (sorry, believing) otherwise.
Seems that they’ve caught wind of a “rumor” that makes them so happy and joyous that they just HAD to print it on the top of their front page today. And that rumor is that since Cheney recently dismissed his personal doctor, he must have done it so that he could see a new one who will conveniently tell him in August his heart problems make him unfit to run with Mr. Bush. In other words, Bush is looking for a plausible excuse to throw his “unpopular” veep off of the ticket so as to have a chance of “saving his presidency.”
Even ABC News wasn’t buying this one.
So it’s more mental masturbation by lefties with too much time on their hands. At least Ms. Bumiller isn’t making Bush effigies instead.
Thing is, contrary to my previous speculation, it isn’t just the disloyal opposition who is wafting this innuendo. Last week “Pothole Al” D’Amato publicly called for Cheney’s ouster and replacement by either Secretary of State Colin Powell or Arizona Senator John McCain. He went out of his way to assure his listeners that he was confident the President would win if Cheney remains on the ticket (which means he thinks precisely the opposite), but that Powell or McCain would help him win decisively so as to have a second term mandate.
It should be remembered that D’Amato is a RINO (Republican in name only) of long and infamous standing. Which suggests to me that the Rockefeller winglet of the GOP thinks the President is going to lose and is already dreaming up pre-emptive finger-pointing angles for how the “radical right wing” caused another Bush defeat and has settled upon Cheney as their scapegoat.
That, in turn, implies that they know full well that Cheney isn’t going anywhere, and that they’d rather have one of their own in the veep slot so as to clear the decks for a presidential run in 2008 that will be aimed at least as much at finally re-taking the party as it will be retaining, or regaining, the White House.
Just check out some of the alternatives being floated: New York Governor George Pataki, a bigger spender even than Mario Cuomo was in his heyday; Homeland Security Secretary and former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, who, as a congressmen during the Reagan years, was a stubbornly dovish foe of the Gipper’s foreign and defense policies; Rudy Giuliani, who may be “America’s mayor,” but ran on the Liberal party line in each New York mayoral race while eschewing the state’s influential Conservative Party; the aforementioned Senator McCain, who bolted the conservative movement long ago and was the RINOs’ chief subversive vehicle in the 2000 GOP primaries; and Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who is simply George Pataki in a smaller northeastern state.
There are four names I’ve seen that wouldn’t cause a revolt of the Republican grassroots: Secretary Powell (because his stature transcends ideological pedigrees), National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, and Colorado Governor Bill Owens. Of this quartet, Powell doesn’t want the job, Rice isn’t ready for it, and Owens is too much of an unknown on the national level. That would leave Santorum, who could provide the combination of characteristics (availability, staunchly conservative, ability to tip a big battleground state, far more qualified and accomplished than John Edwards, and if you buy the “Cheney is a liability” contention, no connection to the Bush national security team) to succeed Cheney without causing a base meltdown and subsequent electoral debacle.
It is a substitution I could certainly live with. What matters to me is that this Administration not lose a prominent rightward voice at the President’s right hand; whether that voice is Cheney or Santorum would be immaterial.
But even Santorum would bring some “baggage” with him, when baggage is defined as “targets of Democratic demagoguery.” Remember his prediction, borne out this past spring, that last year’s SCOTUS ruling in the Texas sodomy case would lead inevitably to sodomarriage? The other side would turn him into “the son of Pat Buchanan” and reprise the same “Nazi culture warrior” spiel from 1992.
So what, you say? They’d do that to pretty much anybody Bush chose? Well, then, why replace Cheney in the first place?
What is really NEW about any of the left’s attack points on the Vice President? Halliburton? He’s a “corporate robber baron”? He’s a “secretive energy schemer”? He “pulled Bush’s strings on the ‘unnecessary’ war in Iraq?” They’ve been hurling this excrement for three and a half years. They did so in the 2000 campaign. Hasn’t made a dime’s worth of difference to the popularity or successes of the Bush Administration. And NOW he’s suddenly a “drag on the ticket”? This just doesn’t compute.
Besides, they’ve said all the same things about Bush. As Mark Halperin observes in the aforementioned The Note blog, “removing [Cheney] would bring on…accusations of implicit concession of error on Iraq and other policies; and some charges of political cravenness.” Indeed it would. If the President were to remove Cheney on the grounds of opposition criticism, what possible reason could any voter have to re-elect him? It would be a Kerry-Edwards ad that Lurch would have to neither approve of nor pay for. It would be the ultimate flip-flop, so bad that it almost wouldn’t matter who Bush chose as a replacement. The left would implicitly have the “apology” they’ve been demanding for months, and Dubya would have no more reason to remain in the White House. You could kiss “steady leadership in times of change” a big, wet goodbye.
And the hell of it would be that Cheney would leave Washington not in disgrace, but vindicated. The Senate Intel report, and especially the British Butler findings that came out this week, debunk the Democrats’ hysterical anti-war nonsense of the past year that “Bush lied!!!!!” about the Saddam/Niger/yellowcake uranium story and the Saddam-al Qaeda relationship and that he “forced” CIA to falsify intelligence to justify invading Iraq, and Cheney manipulated him into doing so. Bush and Cheney didn’t lie; they made an honest, difficult decision in the defense of American lives and interests, and the world, including ourselves and the Iraqis, are much better off for it.
Why, in the wake of the above, should Cheney, or Bush, turn tail and run? And in what conceivable way would it help the President in November?
What time I spent on the “raptly anticipated” Kerry choice has been pretty much vindicated by ensuing events. Back then I wrote: “Edwards is an empty suit, his face and hair more or less sprayed out of an aerosol can… forget Edwards tipping North Carolina.” Of course, the partisan media just LOVE empty suits sprayed out of aerosol cans, which explains the orgasmic raptures that accompanied the two Johns wherever they went last week on their honeymoon gropefest. What didn’t accompany “the sunshine boys,” as Newsweek “objectively” dubbed them, was an appreciable bounce in Kerry’s poll numbers. The best that can be said was that the recent decline in the Boston Balker’s standing was halted, and he managed to pull back into a statistical dead heat with the President. Better than nothing, certainly, and perhaps to be expected in our supposedly “50-50” political landscape, but definitely a lot less than the Democrats were hoping for. Oh, yes, and Bush leads Kerry in North Carolina by fifteen points.
So, in other words, the Edwards buzz is already fading, and his “intellectual slovenliness” will come more and more to the fore. Something on which Dick Cheney will feast like Garfield on a lasagna.
Yes, Dick Cheney. Though if you’re gullible enough to use the New York Times for anything other than auxiliary bathroom tissue, you might be thinking (sorry, believing) otherwise.
Seems that they’ve caught wind of a “rumor” that makes them so happy and joyous that they just HAD to print it on the top of their front page today. And that rumor is that since Cheney recently dismissed his personal doctor, he must have done it so that he could see a new one who will conveniently tell him in August his heart problems make him unfit to run with Mr. Bush. In other words, Bush is looking for a plausible excuse to throw his “unpopular” veep off of the ticket so as to have a chance of “saving his presidency.”
Even ABC News wasn’t buying this one.
Democrats who want John Kerry to be elected spend a lot their time these days fascinated and frightened by the prospect that President Bush will replace Vice President Cheney on the ticket.
How the talented Ms. Bumiller gets just above the front-page fold of her paper today with a story that includes the word ‘rumor’ in the headline is really beyond us.
Look — the only reason to replace Mr. Cheney is if the calculus is made that doing so would increase the chances of Bush re-election.
And that calculation could NEVER be made precisely, since removing him would bring on at least some amount of base unhappiness (particularly if he were replaced by a moderate); some accusations of implicit concession of error on Iraq and other policies; and some charges of political craveness.
Bumiller's story has some clever suggestions that Republicans are a part of a three-way conversation on this, but for the most part, this is a Democrat-and-media dialogue.
So it’s more mental masturbation by lefties with too much time on their hands. At least Ms. Bumiller isn’t making Bush effigies instead.
Thing is, contrary to my previous speculation, it isn’t just the disloyal opposition who is wafting this innuendo. Last week “Pothole Al” D’Amato publicly called for Cheney’s ouster and replacement by either Secretary of State Colin Powell or Arizona Senator John McCain. He went out of his way to assure his listeners that he was confident the President would win if Cheney remains on the ticket (which means he thinks precisely the opposite), but that Powell or McCain would help him win decisively so as to have a second term mandate.
It should be remembered that D’Amato is a RINO (Republican in name only) of long and infamous standing. Which suggests to me that the Rockefeller winglet of the GOP thinks the President is going to lose and is already dreaming up pre-emptive finger-pointing angles for how the “radical right wing” caused another Bush defeat and has settled upon Cheney as their scapegoat.
That, in turn, implies that they know full well that Cheney isn’t going anywhere, and that they’d rather have one of their own in the veep slot so as to clear the decks for a presidential run in 2008 that will be aimed at least as much at finally re-taking the party as it will be retaining, or regaining, the White House.
Just check out some of the alternatives being floated: New York Governor George Pataki, a bigger spender even than Mario Cuomo was in his heyday; Homeland Security Secretary and former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, who, as a congressmen during the Reagan years, was a stubbornly dovish foe of the Gipper’s foreign and defense policies; Rudy Giuliani, who may be “America’s mayor,” but ran on the Liberal party line in each New York mayoral race while eschewing the state’s influential Conservative Party; the aforementioned Senator McCain, who bolted the conservative movement long ago and was the RINOs’ chief subversive vehicle in the 2000 GOP primaries; and Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who is simply George Pataki in a smaller northeastern state.
There are four names I’ve seen that wouldn’t cause a revolt of the Republican grassroots: Secretary Powell (because his stature transcends ideological pedigrees), National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, and Colorado Governor Bill Owens. Of this quartet, Powell doesn’t want the job, Rice isn’t ready for it, and Owens is too much of an unknown on the national level. That would leave Santorum, who could provide the combination of characteristics (availability, staunchly conservative, ability to tip a big battleground state, far more qualified and accomplished than John Edwards, and if you buy the “Cheney is a liability” contention, no connection to the Bush national security team) to succeed Cheney without causing a base meltdown and subsequent electoral debacle.
It is a substitution I could certainly live with. What matters to me is that this Administration not lose a prominent rightward voice at the President’s right hand; whether that voice is Cheney or Santorum would be immaterial.
But even Santorum would bring some “baggage” with him, when baggage is defined as “targets of Democratic demagoguery.” Remember his prediction, borne out this past spring, that last year’s SCOTUS ruling in the Texas sodomy case would lead inevitably to sodomarriage? The other side would turn him into “the son of Pat Buchanan” and reprise the same “Nazi culture warrior” spiel from 1992.
So what, you say? They’d do that to pretty much anybody Bush chose? Well, then, why replace Cheney in the first place?
What is really NEW about any of the left’s attack points on the Vice President? Halliburton? He’s a “corporate robber baron”? He’s a “secretive energy schemer”? He “pulled Bush’s strings on the ‘unnecessary’ war in Iraq?” They’ve been hurling this excrement for three and a half years. They did so in the 2000 campaign. Hasn’t made a dime’s worth of difference to the popularity or successes of the Bush Administration. And NOW he’s suddenly a “drag on the ticket”? This just doesn’t compute.
Besides, they’ve said all the same things about Bush. As Mark Halperin observes in the aforementioned The Note blog, “removing [Cheney] would bring on…accusations of implicit concession of error on Iraq and other policies; and some charges of political cravenness.” Indeed it would. If the President were to remove Cheney on the grounds of opposition criticism, what possible reason could any voter have to re-elect him? It would be a Kerry-Edwards ad that Lurch would have to neither approve of nor pay for. It would be the ultimate flip-flop, so bad that it almost wouldn’t matter who Bush chose as a replacement. The left would implicitly have the “apology” they’ve been demanding for months, and Dubya would have no more reason to remain in the White House. You could kiss “steady leadership in times of change” a big, wet goodbye.
And the hell of it would be that Cheney would leave Washington not in disgrace, but vindicated. The Senate Intel report, and especially the British Butler findings that came out this week, debunk the Democrats’ hysterical anti-war nonsense of the past year that “Bush lied!!!!!” about the Saddam/Niger/yellowcake uranium story and the Saddam-al Qaeda relationship and that he “forced” CIA to falsify intelligence to justify invading Iraq, and Cheney manipulated him into doing so. Bush and Cheney didn’t lie; they made an honest, difficult decision in the defense of American lives and interests, and the world, including ourselves and the Iraqis, are much better off for it.
Why, in the wake of the above, should Cheney, or Bush, turn tail and run? And in what conceivable way would it help the President in November?
posted by JASmius at 5:07 PM
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