Democrats Would Love Cheney To Just Keep Talking-- Republicans Ask Him To STFU

Eric Cantor has trouble remaining anonymous even with all the great makeup

On Sunday night President Obama said he "fundamentally" disagrees with Dick Cheney and "the movement" he heads. He pointed out that Cheney has been a recruiting poster boy for terrorist recruitment worldwide, something that real does make America less safe. Watch:



I doubt many Republican congressmen see it exactly the same way Obama does, but they would very much like him to disappear back into some undisclosed location and not pop his head out again... ever. Without growing a little mustache and donning a swastika it would be difficult to get further right than Knoxville, Tennessee extremist Jimmy Duncan, not someone who ever disagreed with Cheney... on anything but yesterday Duncan was one of several Republican congressmen who loudly broadcast an invitation to Cheney to stay away.

“He became so unpopular while he was in the White House that it would probably be better for us politically if he wouldn’t be so public... But he has the right to speak out since he’s a private citizen.”

GOP Whip Eric Cantor is even further to the right than Duncan-- and unwilling to use his name while commenting on Cheney-- but he's even more insistent that Cheney keep a low profile, for the sake of the party. Cantor, requesting anonymity, "said he wasn’t surprised that Cheney has strongly criticized Obama early in his term, but argued that it’s not helping the GOP cause and pointed out that his approval ratings were even lower than Bush’s during the last Congress. He implied that Cheney is a hothead who "didn’t think through the political implications of going after Obama. He did "House Republicans no favors... I could never understand him anyway.” I wonder how they'll feel about the nation being reminded of all the Bush's Regime's catastrophic foreign policy errors. That comes tonight when Condoleezza Rice appears on the The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Democrats probably aren't as eager for Cheney to vanish. He's so thoroughly loathed and his opinions so completely not respected that a Cheney sighting is always a big turn-off to mainstream voters. The new issue of The Nation makes it clear that Cheney still wants to stick around and fight, especially now that his executive assassination squad has been exposed and may eventually lead to criminal charges.

Bush may actually be embarrassed, or scared, about the mess that was made of international affairs, the economy and our system of constitutional governance during his eight years in the White House.

Cheney isn't.

There will be no apologies from the former vice president.

And there will be no withdrawal from the political frontlines by the man who spun out of the Nixon White House to become Gerald Ford's chief of staff, parlayed that role into a seat in Congress where he served as Ronald Reagan's House floor leader, exploited personal and political ties to position himself as George H.W. Bush's secretary of defense and then effectively nominated himself to be George W. Bush's vice president.

Cheney, whose ambition has always exceeded his knowledge and skill, is determined to defend the political misdeeds, policy machinations and power grabs that-- thanks to George W. Bush's ignorance about the most basic workings of the White House-- briefly made him the most powerful man in the world.

...Should we mind that Cheney intends to stay in the fray?

Not at all.

Cheney should be welcomed to the microphones.

Indeed, his determination to remain in the limelight should make it easier to invite him to explain a few things-- under oath.

Where to begin?

How about with investigative reporter Seymour Hersh's allegation that the Bush-Cheney White House operated an "executive assassination ring" that reported directly to Cheney's office?

...An elite assassination squad run out of the vice president's office?

That certainly sounds like an interesting point at which to begin an official inquiry.

And since the vice president is so willing to talk about his time in office-- as evidenced by his recent media appearances-- why not invite him up to Capitol Hill to engage in it?

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich has a suggestion that might get the ball rolling.

Kucinich has asked New York Congressman Edolphus Towns, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to begin an immediate investigation into Hersh's allegations.

Alas, Towns is the worst kind of do-nothing hack anyone who didn't want any serious investigations would ask for-- which is precisely why he was placed in his new position, after Henry Waxman-- the polar opposite-- moved on. Towns may bury it, but you can read Kucinich's letter here.

Bush, on the other hand, is laying low-- and for good reason: "Job losses in the hundreds of thousands every month, almost weekly bank failures, and 401(k)s at half their value from a year and a half ago. The media treat the question as a mystery that can be solved through scrutiny of the Obama administration's actions starting on January 20, 2009-- an approach that is absurd on its face. The media's erasure of the Bush administration and its policies in their coverage of the economy has been so pervasive that they have given round-the-clock attention to the AIG bonus scandal for days on end with virtually no mention of the fact that it was the Bush administration that last fall approved billions of dollars in aid to AIG without requiring the company to nullify its bonus contracts."