If Cheney Runs For President In 2012, Who WIll The VP Nominee Be?

As Chris Bowers pointed out yesterday, Cheney has the worst approval ratings of any GOP leader eligible to run for office-- Schwarzenegger (immigrant), Cunningham (imprisoned convicted felon), Bush (ex-president) may have worse ratings but are constitutionally barred from running. So in an unending quest for the bottom of the barrel it should surprise no one that Politico's Roger Simon has proposed-- with a straight face-- that the GOP should run the "bitter," "white" 68 year old Cheney for president in 2012. "He is the Republican Party today." Simon's certainly got that right.

He’s tanned, he’s rested and his approval ratings can only go up... Cheney has many pluses. He is very, very good on TV. (People who don’t like what he says overlook how good he is at saying it.) He is calm, articulate and often courageous. Who else but Dick Cheney would have the guts to go on Face the Nation With Bob Schieffer and say “in terms of being a Republican, I’d go with Rush Limbaugh” rather than Colin Powell?

After that, Maureen Dowd wrote: “Cheney, who had five deferments himself to get out of going to Vietnam, would rather follow a blowhard entertainer who has had three divorces and a drug problem (who also avoided Vietnam) than a four-star general who spent his life serving his country.”

To which the Republican wing of the Republican Party replies, “Yeah? So who wouldn’t?”

And that's the point, of course. The vast majority of Americans wouldn't. Instead of joining the conversation about what Americans really want from their government-- an economy that creates jobs and deals with health care, the environment and financial predators and a government that is serious, not just political, about national security-- the GOP has decided to put all their energy into "re-branding" the Democratic Party as "socialist." This is not only an incredibly stupid strategy, it is hardly original and has already been proven a surefire loser.

In 1932 when FDR and the New Dealers rolled up their sleeves and set about to rescue the country from a Great Depression caused by decades of unfettered corporate excesses and grotesque Republican misrule, the Republicans went on an orgy of obstructionism. When Social Security came up for a vote in the House, not a single Republican voted in favor-- not one. Instead, it was seared into the minds of voters that the GOP was the Party of Sore Losers. While FDR was busy rescuing and rebuilding, the Republican Party decided to re-brand the Democrats... as socialists. And how did that work out for them? When Hoover won the presidency in 1928, on the eve of the Depression, 270 Republicans were elected to the House and the Senate had a 56-35 seat GOP majority. Republicans with a world view identical to that of John Boehner, Miss McConnell, Jim DeMint, Newt Gingrich, and Rush Limbaugh put together their multi-cycle obstructionism/rebranding strategy which resulted in a loss of nearly 200 House seats by 1936. That's right; the GOP sank from 270 seats to just 88 in the House. And their healthy majority in the Senate? After the 1936 election their 56 seats dwindled down to just 17 impotent, barking chihuahuas.

But today's GOP thinks it can avert that kind of a disaster even while following an identical script. In fact, just today, while Michael Steele continues his clown act to try to divert the Inside-the-Beltway media from what really troubles Americans (you know, the jobs and health care stuff) with an all-out, vicious partisan attack on Nancy Pelosi, brilliant strategist Pete Sessions (R-TX), head of the NRCC, has announced his own initiative for the future: protecting Republican House seats that seem destined to fall to Democrats. Based on the DCCC's Front Line Program, the Repug's now have the Patriot Program" and the first set of targets they identified are a pack of obstructionists whose constituents clearly chose Obama and his program for change-- Dan Lungren (R-CA), Ken Calvert (R-CA), Brian Bilbray (R-CA), Judy Biggert (R-IL), Anh Cao (R-LA), Thad McCotter (R-MI), Erik Paulsen (R-MN), Leonard Lance (R-NJ), Christopher Lee (R-NY) and Dave Reichert (R-WA). I guess they decided three other gals, Michele Bachmann (R-MN), David Dreier (R-CA), and Mary Bono (R-CA) are too hopelessly lost to do anything about saving. My favorite aspect of the program is Sessions' promise to bring in "high-profile Republican surrogates" to campaign for the potential losers. If they use Bowers' chart that means they'll steer clear of the only "high-profile Republican surrogates" who can raise money from the base-- Bush, Cheney, Gingrich, Boehner, Limbaugh, McConnell, Romney-- because they are hated by normal voters. Maybe they plan to keep Laura Bush and Cindy (or even Meghan) McCain busy all year.

Each Repug was forced to sign a "contract" with the NRCC promising to raise certain amounts of money-- i.e., sell their votes to Big Oil, banksters, corporate criminals, etc-- and if they don't prove they have the bribes rolling it, the NRCC will cut them off.

“The fundamental difference between last cycle’s ROMP [Regain Our Majority Program] event and the new Patriot Program can be defined in one word: accountability,” said NRCC Communications Director Ken Spain. “Those members who have signed on the dotted line and exhibited progress on the campaign front will reap the benefits of this new NRCC program.”

I spoke to staffers for three of the candidates-- all would only agree to talk off the record-- and when I asked them the same question about having Cheney come into their districts to campaign, they all had identical answers. They would like Cheney to host a fundraiser for them in DC but his presence in their districts would almost guarantee Democratic wins in each one. "Cheney is a polarizing figure," said one top staffer. "The base who listen to Limbaugh and the donors like him a lot but the moderates who decide elections in [I promised not to say] think he's part of a past they would rather move on from. He hasn't offered to come and we wouldn't invite him." When I pressed a little further to see if the congressmember would appear on the same stage with Cheney in the district the answer was something about how McCain banished Cheney from the campaign trail last year and how it would be "political suicide" this year. I'm guessing Roger Simon doesn't get outside the Beltway much.

Oh-- and to answer the question in the title, I guess his wife or daughter are the only ones fit to be his running mate-- other than Michael Savage. Personally, I would have suggested a more balanced ticket, like with a more mainstream conservative. Someone like Jon Huntsman, Jr (R-UT) would have made sense-- but, apparently, he's going to be busy converting the heathens and inducting them into the Mormon cult. And when he's done with China... there's India.