I'm increasingly getting the sense that there is significant erosion of support for Bush. There are more and more stories about the ballooning deficit, lack of job growth, lies about WMD etc... etc... However the most interesting development is ambivalence and hostility toward Bush from the Right. I often check out the Free Republic website to find out how the right wing is reacting to current events and there has been definitely been a shift in attitude towards Bush. The article below from Salon discusses the same phenomenon. This is not to say in any way that Democrats are in for an easy ride in the upcoming election- far from it. However, I think there is a real opening and that any of the likely candidates can take it. From salon.com (this is only the first half of the article)- The conservatives are outraged -- about Bush At the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, foot soldiers of the right rail against the big-government, free-spending ways of the White House. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Michelle Goldberg Jan. 27, 2004 | CRYSTAL CITY, Va. -- Razor-tongued right-wing darling Michelle Malkin stood before a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday and denounced George Bush's new immigration policy. Her voice oozing contempt, she described Bush as "Clintonian" for claiming to oppose amnesty in his State of the Union speech. She held up an orange sign with Bush's words, "I oppose amnesty," written on it. Then she ripped it up and roared, "What part of amnesty doesn't he understand?" This year's CPAC, an annual conference that's ground zero of the vast right-wing conspiracy, pulsated with the usual antipathy toward liberals, gays, secular judges, environmentalists and Europeans. Yet many attendees also bristled with a more uneasy anger, one directed at their erstwhile allies in the White House. Conservative activists, especially older ones, felt betrayed and disappointed by Bush's immigration policy, his expansion of the federal government and his promiscuous spending, so much so that some suggested the grass-roots right might stay home on Election Day. There were plenty of passionate Bush fans in attendance, most of them college students, but movement leaders and veterans spoke of them with outright contempt. One right-wing pollster called them "Bushlickers." This year's CPAC, in fact, was more encouraging for liberals than conservatives. Bush's right-wing base is demanding more concessions than he's made so far, but those concessions are likely to erode whatever moderate support the president has. At one of the most fervently Republican gatherings in the country, it wasn't hard to find people who were planning to vote for third-party candidates from the Constitution or Libertarian parties, and a few even confided in whispers that they might vote for Joe Lieberman or John Edwards if given a chance. The mood was like that of liberals in 2000 who saw Al Gore as nothing more than a lesser evil and yearned to send a futile message through Ralph Nader. While the grass-roots left is more motivated and disciplined than it's ever been, the grass-roots right has turned sullen and uncompromising. "A lot of people here don't care if Bush wins or not," said Rick Shaftan, a right-wing political consultant and pollster based in New Jersey. That's good news for Democrats, because few people care more about conservative politics than CPAC attendees. Organized by the American Conservative Union, CPAC is a three-day conference that brings together the leaders of the American right with their most passionate foot soldiers. This year, around 4,000 people gathered at a Marriott in Crystal City, Va., outside of Washington, to hear speakers including Vice President Dick Cheney, neo-McCarthyite Ann Coulter, veteran anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Iran-Contra veteran Oliver North. Coulter offered a salutary reminder of how the right really feels about "political hate speech," telling a cheering crowd of hundreds that the Democrats' key constituency consists of "breathtakingly stupid women." She declared, "You can never be too scandalous in talking about liberals. These people are animals; they want to destroy the country and they support the Taliban and al-Qaida the way they supported Stalin in McCarthy's day." Oliver North, the Iran-Contra conspirator, was equally magnanimous, making a joke about journalists killed covering Iraq. "Seventeen war correspondents were killed," he said. "That's unusual. Usually war correspondents are just injured and become casualties when they fall off their egos and land on their IQs." Meanwhile, a company called Star Spangled Ice Cream, a right-wing answer to Ben and Jerry's, handed out samples of "I Hate the French Vanilla" and vendors sold "Bring Back the Blacklist" mugs and "Dean People Suck" buttons. Yet all the fervent vituperation couldn't hide the widespread feeling of disillusionment. At last year's CPAC, worship for the president was almost cultlike -- people festooned themselves with T-shirts and buttons bearing his face and bought up George Bush mouse pads, mugs and handbags. The same merchandise was for sale this year, but it wasn't moving as swiftly. By Saturday, Bush baseball caps had been marked down from $15 to $3. "There's concern over what Bush is doing, no question," said Donald Devine, vice chairman of the American Conservative Union and former director of the Office of Personnel Management in the Reagan administration. "He's increased domestic spending more than any recent president. I don't think it's turned into voting against Bush. It may show up in terms of turnout. In the past, that's hurt Republicans." Indeed, that's why Shaftan, a Jewish Manhattan native wearing a Confederate flag tie under his gray suit, said he wouldn't bet on Bush in the coming election. "If I still gambled, I would not say he's the favorite," he said. A recent Newsweek poll says the same thing, with 52 percent of voters wanting to see Bush defeated in the 2004 election. Even more significantly, the poll shows fewer people passionately support Bush than passionately oppose him -- while 37 percent of respondents said they strongly want to see Bush reelected, 47 percent strongly do not. "Some people are upset that Bush himself didn't come," said Foster Lowe, Republican co-chairman of Little Ferry, N.J. Lowe and Shaftan were standing with a group of New Jersey Republicans, all of them griping about the president. "We're the base, and there's an undercurrent of unhappiness," Lowe said. "Last year, everyone was super-excited." Shaftan looked at Lowe and said, "Where's your 'W' sticker?" "I don't know," Lowe shrugged, adding that he has one on his car. "Everyone here should be having five Bush stickers on," said Shaftan. "In '84, it was a Reagan lovefest. People had 12 stickers." Now, he said, "I don't sense any great deal of enthusiasm." Republican leaders, he said, "are all fat and lazy and thinking they can't lose. These guys are just very arrogant. They think, 'What are they going to do, vote for Kerry?'" "Don't tell me I have nowhere else to go," said Steven Lonegan, the Republican mayor of Bogota, N.J., speaking of feeling insulted by an administration that takes conservatives for granted.
Bush isn't oblivious to the erosion of support. I've read that several "insiders" (whoever they are) have said that he will drop Cheney to stop the erosion. That way, all the negative stuff -- the war, Halliburton, etc. -- can be jettisoned with him. Just rumors at this point, obviously. But if Bush drops Cheney, attaches all the administration's screw-ups to him, and adds someone like Giuliani (who's pro-choice, pro-gay rights, etc.), the election could be a landslide. Should be interesting.
So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish: A Warhawk Flies the Coop January 27, 2004 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- by Jonathan David Morris -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I start on a personal note. I would like for the record to show that, today, I formally disavow the Republican Party as well as my past support for the Second Gulf War. Now, let me be frank: This is something I didn't see coming a year ago. I only saw things through a prism of GOP allegiance back then. I'm a year older now -- a year wiser, I suppose. It shouldn't be easy for an op-ed writer to admit when he's wrong. But I was. And it is. And in light of George Bush's latest State of the Union, saying goodbye to the Republican Party is the easiest thing I've done in quite some time. This doesn't mean I've gone Democrat, though. Quite the contrary. But let me explain. There was a time not long ago when the president could do no wrong in my eyes, a time when I was willing to write, as I did in September '02, "I have faith in President Bush." That time ended last summer, however, when I finally got fed up with his fiscally ridiculous ways. Indeed, John Kerry calls the Bush White House "reckless," and when it comes to our wallets I tend to agree. And while I never thought I'd say this, the way Bush spends -- and spends, and spends -- I'm beginning to miss Bill Clinton. Must we go to the moon, I mean? And must it cost billions in taxpayer dollars? Can't we just build a really tall ladder instead? Anyway, with fiscal disgruntlement in mind, I began looking over my earlier work a few months ago, hoping to justify just what it was that made me vote Republican. I soon found the truth: I was as much a partisan cheerleader as the Hollywood Lefties I claimed to despise. And at first, I confess, I thought to address this in an Orwellian way -- that is, I thought to erase the past by removing older articles from my Web site's archives. Not wanting to repeat my personal history, however, I've decided to take myself on instead. Thus, this here mea culpa. My thoughts on my partisan past? In retrospect, it bugs me. It means I ignored the fact that Big Gov't is Big Gov't no matter the name it goes by -- GOP, DNC, or what have you. For a time there, especially when I was first getting started three years ago, I had nary a thought of my own. I was accused a time or two of receiving Republican talking points. I didn't need them. All I had to do was turn on Sean Hannity and I'd end up repeating everything he said. The closest I came to independent thinking was repeating the words of people who claimed to be independent thinkers. Case in point: In my first ever political diatribe, dated May 7, 2001, I referred to myself as "a non-partisan moderate," then went on to scold anyone critical of George Bush. I compare this now to North Korean girls crying tears of joy at the sight of Kim Jong Il. More importantly, though, half the things I wrote back then were devoid of actual substance. I didn't have ideas. I had suggestions. I had templates. I applied them to whatever topic was hot, and voila! I had an article. Which is a fine way to make a deadline, sure, but it's really not so fulfilling. Take, for example, this gem from my February 25, 2003, article, "Time, Like France, Is Not On Our Side": "You know, it's not that I've ever taken things for granted, but my deep appreciation for American life only really settled in on September 11th. The feeling has yet to let me go." Well, that's great and all, but what the hell was I saying? It didn't mean anything. Watch me change the words: "You know, it's not that I've ever taken the Canadian p*rn industry for granted, but my deep appreciation for it only really settled in when I witnessed Taliban p*rn firsthand. The feeling has yet to let me go." And you see, much like Mad Libs, a few changed words didn't change the substance one lick. And I'll tell you the thing that gets me now is I really, truly believed at the time that that was one of my finest articles ever. At the time, it probably was. But I wrote a lot of stuff like that during the build-up to the Second Gulf War. I was still in a woe-is-me, post-9/11 rut back then, and I went along with the war without thinking critically or questioning a damn thing. This bothers me now because, regardless of whether I support my having supported it, I would've done well to have followed less blindly -- as a writer, as an American, as a man. In that very same article on February 25, I wrote: "I don't want this war… anymore than the next guy." That sounded nice when I wrote it, but it wasn't exactly true. I mean, of course I wanted the war more than the next guy. I was rooting for it with thousand-word diatribes each and every Tuesday. The least I could've done is not lied about it. But, indeed, I was the one I was lying to. It was one of those you're-only-fooling-yourself moments, and I fell for it. Well, unlike The Who, I can't promise I won't get fooled again, but I can promise you I don't want to. Before the Second Gulf War, we heard about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. I'll say now, like I said then, that the actual weapons were secondary to the shady way in which he treated the weapons inspectors. It seemed to prove he was hiding something, and there remains the chance that he was. Either way, I enjoy the fact that he's out of power. But if his sketchiness was cause for war, what, then, can I say about Bush's own sketchiness on this issue? I've got the State of the Union transcript in front of me as I write this. By my count, the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" is mentioned three times. The first regards Libya's voluntary disarmament. Next comes Bush's claim that a report by inspector David Kay "identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." And finally, Bush said, "Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day." Yet the evidence, thus far, indicates Saddam's storied stockpiles were just that: Stories. Dozens of 'em. So did Iraq really have WMD programs? Colin Powell says "we don't know yet." And David Kay says the evidence suggests "the weapons do not exist." Both men revealed their opinions mere days after the State of the Union. Surely the president knew about them ahead of time. Why no mention of it, then? A simple "Oops," or "I'm as surprised by this as you are," would've sufficed. Instead, he treated this "credibility gap" -- as Tom Daschle might call it -- as a non-issue. Out of sight. Out of mind. What a brilliant PR move. Sort of reminds me of the time Baghdad Bob said coalition troops were nowhere near the airport, when, in fact, they had taken the airport. Ted Kennedy said of the war on Iraq last September, "There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas." I don't like Ted Kennedy, and I don't want to believe him. There's no denying, though, that a good many members of the Bush administration had been advocating this war for years -- indeed, since before the "new Pearl Harbor" (i.e., 9/11) that they suggested would push forward their plan. I want to believe their intentions were genuine. I want to "have faith," as I said before. But I see the lack of WMDs in Iraq, and I see Bush's reluctance to so much as address the issue, and it starts to remind me of another George -- this one Costanza -- who once drove his in-laws to his house in the Hamptons despite knowing full well he had no house there. Which brings me back to the reason I'm disavowing the Republican Party. Bush said of the Patriot Act in his State of the Union this year, "Our law enforcement needs this vital legislation to protect our citizens." Some in the chamber booed this statement. In a prepared response later that evening, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said, "Democrats have a better way to ensure our homeland security." She explained the dangers of uninspected shipping containers and concluded, "America will be far safer if we reduce the chances of a terrorist attack in one of our cities than if we diminish the civil liberties of our own people." The president has proven we can't trust him with our wallets. Some would say we can't trust him on foreign affairs. Meanwhile, both parties would rely on government power to wage the war on terror, and this is what scares me the most. I am an average, everyday American. I used to be able to see the Twin Towers from atop the hill behind my home. When those buildings went down, my heart said, "Give the government free reign." No longer. The CIA failed to stop 9/11. They've failed to find whoever sent anthrax, and the war that I supported because of that anthrax was built on yet more bad intelligence. Now we're supposed to let men in publicly subsidized uniforms break into our homes to "protect" us? No wonder they send folks to jail for fighting back against petty burglars. With an attitude like that, we'd kick the government out of our homes, too. So here's the bottom line: I supported the Second Gulf War because I thought we were waging it in self-defense. The lack of WMDs leads me to believe we had nothing to defend ourselves from -- except fear. I see now that the arguments I made in favor of the war were as empty as the arguments made for and against it by our leaders. My error was putting my "faith" in the government. It can't protect me, and it won't. The First and Second Amendments show we're supposed to protect ourselves. As part of this, I'm going to get off my lazy rear end and learn how to use a gun already. I've been meaning to do so for ages. I plan on doing so soon. Thomas Jefferson wrote that men "are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." For me, this means it's time to declare my independence from the Left/Right dichotomy. If I don't know who to trust, I'll trust no one. It's safer that way.
Bush isn't oblivious to the erosion of support. I've read that several "insiders" (whoever they are) have said that he will drop Cheney to stop the erosion. That way, all the negative stuff -- the war, Halliburton, etc. -- can be jettisoned with him. Rumsfeld is at the top of my list. He is responsible for dressing up the weak Iraq intel for something that was not while ignoring stronger intel that disagreed with his objective. He also pushed out the "facts" that the Iraqi oil could pay for its reconstruction and the Iraqi would greet us with open arms and occupation would not last more than 6 months and ... In the real world if a corporate middle manager came up with aplan that missed the mark this dramatically he would be shown the door. It is times like these that I am glad that GWB has all that experience in the business world.
I'm not really into politics, war games etc., and I guess I am just ignorant... But I have have to wonder when will the "War on Terror" end? When will terror be erradicated, what is the schedule? I see a never ending "War on Drugs" and I wonder if this "war" is going to be the same way. Will it just become a never ending part of our culture?
great question. i hope it ends in the way the war against the organized crime of the mafia ends. or the war against the KKK ends. certainly those groups are still in existence today, but not nearly the threat they once were. that's my hope.
I dunno, the budget mess is so bad it may take ten years to fix. How can one make presiding over that positive? GWB has very little real world business experience. He was handed everything on a silver spoon. Most folks who love their work spend most of their time at it, Bush spends 40 percent of his time on vacations. The Bushies were handed a plan to attack Al Qaeda when they took office and refused to carry it out. Clark and Tenet warned them repeatedly in the months leading up to September 11. This negligence is worse than the Iraqi war debacle and this mofo does not even mention it. Now it comes out that if we had simply enforced our current immigration laws we would have prevented almost all of the September 11 hijackers from entering the country, negating any need for the Patriot act.
From The Onion... _______________ Bush 2004 Campaign Pledges To Restore Honor And Dignity To White House BOSTON—Addressing guests at a $2,000-a-plate fundraiser, George W. Bush pledged Monday that, if re-elected in November, he and running mate Dick Cheney will "restore honor and dignity to the White House." "After years of false statements and empty promises, it's time for big changes in Washington," Bush said. "We need a president who will finally stand up and fight against the lies and corruption. It's time to renew the faith the people once had in the White House. If elected, I pledge to usher in a new era of integrity inside the Oval Office." Bush told the crowd that, if given the opportunity, he would work to reestablish the goodwill of the American people "from the very first hour of the very first day" of his second term. "The people have spoken," Bush said. "They said they want change. They said it's time to clean up Washington. They're tired of politics as usual. They're tired of the pursuit of self-interest that has gripped Washington. They want to see an end to partisan bickering and closed-door decision-making. If I'm elected, I'll make sure that the American people can once again place their trust in the White House." Bush said the soaring national debt and the lengthy war in Iraq have shaken Americans' faith in the highest levels of government. "A credibility gap has opened between the Oval Office and America," Bush said. "The public hears talk, but they don't see any result. But if you choose me as your next president, the promises I make in my inaugural address will actually mean something. The president of this country will be held accountable for his promises, starting Jan. 20 of next year." Bush said that, if chosen to be the next president, he would "set the nation on a course to a new, different, and brighter future." "One thing is clear—it's time for a fresh beginning," Bush said. "Choose the ticket that leads to freedom, peace, and security. Choose Bush and Cheney." Cheney spoke Monday at an event in Atlanta, addressing a crowd of 2,500 supporters from the tobacco and soft-drink industries. "After these past three years, we need to rebuild a government based on old-fashioned American values: duty, dignity, and responsibility," said Cheney, who has served as a Wyoming congressman and U.S. vice-president. "George Bush is a man of these values, and he's ready to begin to put them to work in Washington." Cheney continued: "George W. Bush will lead this great nation by building coalitions, not burning bridges; by serving the people, not special interests; by looking to the future, while borrowing from the great lessons of the past." Cheney said he and Bush will return "time-honored American values" to the White House. "In years past, American citizens looked to the president as a paragon of decency, a beacon in the storm," Cheney said. "When did America lose her way?" In an interview published in Tuesday's Washington Post, Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign manager Ken Mehlman summarized the new platform. "Bush-Cheney 2004 is a campaign built on straight talk," Mehlman said. "It's time for a president who can be a role model for Americans. Bush is the man for the job. He'll finally restore integrity to the highest office in the land. Won't you give him a chance?"
Conservative sportsmen turn against Bush Wed Jan 28, 7:13 AM ET Add Op/Ed - USATODAY.com to My Yahoo! By Nick Jans "This is really some country," says my friend Arnie Erickson. He, his young son and I make our way down a steep slope toward Otter Lake, through a grove of centuries-old spruce, some of them with trunks 4 and 5 feet thick. We're scouting for spring steelhead fishing and next fall's deer in a rugged corner of Alaska's Tongass, our country's largest national forest, which encompasses nearly 17 million acres. The pristine landscape seems serene and timeless. But as things stand now, this place is doomed. Late last month, the Bush administration announced it would exempt the Tongass National Forest from the roadless rule, set in place by former president Bill Clinton (news - web sites), which protected 58 million acres of public land nationwide. Former timber lobbyist Mark Rey, now undersecretary of Agriculture, spearheaded the rollback. Fifty industrial clear-cutting operations in untouched areas of the Tongass are set to move forward. The Otter Lake area, on Chichagof Island, is one of the first tracts scheduled for logging. Little surprise that conservation-oriented groups such as the National Resource Defense Council, Greenpeace and the Alaska Rainforest Campaign are up in arms. They point out that the U.S. Forest Service's new logging plan targets 2.5 million acres of wilderness and contains more than half of the forest's remaining huge, old-growth trees - the very places on which the Tongass' abundant fish and wildlife most depend. The tree-huggers fume that government subsidies to the timber industry cost taxpayers hundreds of millions, and the nearly 5,000 miles of existing logging roads are enough. But a powerful rumble of discontent is growing from what seems, at first glance, an unlikely source. Just weeks before the exemption was declared, Dale Bosworth, chief of the Forest Service, received a petition from the Northern Sportsmen Network of Juneau, Alaska. It was signed by 470 gun clubs from across the USA, 40 of them based in President Bush (news - web sites)'s home state of Texas. In places, their letter sounds like classic "greenie" rhetoric, calling the Tongass "an unparalleled part of the American landscape," the management of which should "err on the side of caution." The message, which failed to sway the Forest Service, is clear and to the point: "We urge the Department (of Agriculture) to leave the Tongass protections intact." But while their agenda is similar to traditional environmentalist groups' agendas, their focus is quite different. The drive's organizer, Greg Petrich, explains, "This isn't about the trees. What gets these clubs' attention is that the best hunting and fishing in America is threatened on land that belongs to them." Petrich typifies the organization's constituency. The registered Republican, an avid outdoorsman with a degree in gunsmithing, says, "I respect Bush. I just can't believe he's doing this. The right thing is so obvious, it's a no-brainer." The "right thing," as far as the Northern Sportsmen are concerned, is protecting the Tongass against the damage of game habitat wreaked by clear-cutting and the encroachment of roads into some of the nation's largest remaining chunks of wilderness. Petrich minces no words about the message his group wants to send. "We want to make this an election issue," he says. "We want to make it clear that President Bush and members of Congress stand to lose something if they don't reverse their misguided actions." This groundswell of conservative opposition to the administration's environmental policies is not limited to the Tongass. Hunting and fishing conservation vs. resource development on public lands is a growing issue throughout traditional GOP enclaves in the American West. Along Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, for example, protests from sportsmen on natural gas exploration are ringing out. This area is revered by hunters and fishers for its world-class trout and large populations of big game. "Areas like this should be last on the list," says Paul Hansen of the Izaak Walton League. "A lot of conservative-voting people are pretty unhappy over the Bush administration's record on issues like this." And that record was amplified by the ringing silence accorded environmental issues in last week's State of the Union message. "What's happening now on public lands is forcing sportsmen to organize," adds Chris Wood, vice president for conservation at Trout Unlimited. "Never before have our interests been as at risk as they are now." His group boasts close to 150,000 members, fewer than 30% of whom say they are Democrats. The political clout of the hook-and-bullet crowd is potentially staggering. According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service statistics, 47 million Americans over age 16 fished or hunted in the past year. Adding those who do so less regularly would mean millions more. "This is a constituency that is slow to anger, but the administration is starting to see a backlash," Wood says. "The 'Sportsmen for Bush' bumper stickers ... might be pretty scarce in 2004." Hansen agrees. "Sportsmen are a significant swing vote, and taking this block of voters for granted on account of Second Amendment rights is a miscalculation." Whether this wide-flung group is capable of banding together with their traditional environmentalist foes to protect common interests remains to be seen. But the angry shouts are growing. When I look in the mirror, I see an ardent outdoorsman and an independent who once voted Republican. I won't make that mistake again.
Conservatives are demanding more? He's already given them two huge tax breaks; he's a CEO's wet dream (tax-exempt, deregulation, environmental nightmare, etc). And poor Bushie can't give them enough? Man, we're in real trouble if he gets a second term. And isn't it really arrogant to turn one's nose up at Kerry? Granted, we Bish-haters do the same, but Kerry at least has some credentials for the job besides "I slob the nob of CEO's and neo-con warmongers. Praise Jesus."
This little piece is interesting. _______________ http://www.atimes.com Front Page Will Dubya dump Dick? By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - While Democratic rivals battle for the presidential nomination in a succession of grueling primary elections, Vice President Dick Cheney appears to be fighting to secure his spot on the Republican ticket behind President George W Bush. The vice president, whose apparent moderation and 35-year Washington experience reassured voters worried about the callowness and inexperience of Bush during the 2000 campaign, is seen more and more by Republican Party politicos as a drag on the president's re-election chances in what is expected to be an extremely close race. The reasons are simple: instead of the moderate voice of wisdom and caution that voters thought they were getting in the vice president, ongoing disclosures about his role in the drive to war in Iraq and other controversial administration plans depict him as an extremist who constantly pushed for the most radical measures. He is seen as not just an extremist, but also a kind of eminence grise who exercises undue influence over Bush to further a radical agenda, a notion that was backed by the publication of a recent book about former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, who described Cheney as creating a "kind of praetorian guard around the president" that blocked out contrary views. In addition, Cheney's association with Halliburton, the giant construction and oil company he headed for much of the 1990s and that gobbled up billions of dollars in contracts for Iraq's postwar reconstruction, is growing steadily as a major political liability. Indeed, Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail are already using Halliburton's rhythmic, four-syllable name (HAL-li-bur-ton, HAL-li-bur-ton) as a mantra that neatly taps into the public's growing concerns overn Iraq and disgust with crony capitalism and corporate greed all at the same time. Reports were already surfacing two months ago that a discreet "dump Cheney" movement had been launched by intimate associates of Bush's father (former president George H W Bush) - his national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former secretary of state James Baker, who now has a White House appointment as Bush Jr's personal envoy to persuade official creditors to reduce substantially Iraq's US$110 billion foreign debt. In addition to their perception that Cheney's presence would harm Bush's re-election chances, Scowcroft and Baker, who battled frequently with the vice president when he was defense secretary in the first Bush administration, have privately expressed great concern over Cheney's unparalleled influence over the younger Bush and the damage that has done to US relations with longtime allies, particularly in Europe and the Arab world. Cheney's unprecedented rounds of press interviews this month, as well as his trip this week to Switzerland and Italy - only the second time the vice president has traveled abroad in three years - should be seen in this context. "I think he knows that he's in trouble," one prominent Republican activist who thinks Cheney should be dropped said this week. "I don't think there's any other way to explain why he would sit for a puerile interview for the [Washington Post's] Style section. You know he despises that sort of thing." Cheney's travel and sudden and abundant press availability was noted in Tuesday's New York Times, which described his behavior as "a calculated election-year makeover to temper his hardline image at home and abroad". But what was remarkable is that he might only have confirmed the growing impression that he remains a zealot, a notion that was especially pronounced in an interview he gave National Public Radio (NPR) last week. Cheney not only insisted that major stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) might still be found in Iraq, he also asserted that two semi-trailer trucks found in that country during last year's US-led war constituted "conclusive evidence" of WMD programs. Both assertions were almost instantly refuted by none other than the administration's outgoing chief weapons inspector, David Kay. In a series of statements published after Cheney's NPR broadcast, Kay said he had concluded that the WMD stockpiles were destroyed in the early 1990s, and that the two trailers were intended to produce hydrogen for weather balloons or possibly rocket fuel, but had nothing to do with WMD. In the same NPR interview Cheney also insisted there was "overwhelming evidence" of an "established relationship" between former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist group, citing as one clue Saddam's alleged harboring of a suspect in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. But the notion of such an "established relationship" in any operational sense has now been virtually totally discarded by the intelligence community, and Bush and other senior officials have largely dropped the issue. Moreover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other intelligence agencies that investigated the 1993 bombing and the subsequent residence in Iraq of Abdul Rahman Yasin, a low-level suspect, found no evidence that Baghdad was actively protecting him or that he was linked to Iraqi intelligence in any way. In a second interview, Cheney told USA Today he was not worried about his image as the administration's Machiavelli, skilled in the quiet arts of persuading his "Prince" to pursue questionable policies, adding, surprisingly un-self-consciously, "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole? It's a nice way to operate, actually." But whether Cheney likes it or not, he is increasingly seen that way, by Democrats, by Republican internationalists such as Baker and Scowcroft, and, perhaps most significantly for purposes of Bush's re-election prospects, by a growing number of traditionally Republican right-wingers and libertarians worried about the impact of the exploding costs of the "war on terror" on the country's fiscal health, individual liberties and armed forces. They also blame Cheney for being the administration's key backer and enabler of the neo-conservative vision of a never-ending war against radical Islam, which they believe will only accelerate current trends. "So Dick Cheney turns out to be a true radical - not a moderate Republican," noted Georgie Anne Geyer, a nationally syndicated columnist, who compared the vice president to Cardinal Richelieu of 17th-century France in a cover article for this week's edition of American Conservative magazine. "While there is little mystery about what he has actually done, there remains the mystery of how a man from Wyoming should be the epicenter of a scheme so strange, so Machiavellian, so profoundly disaggregated from the American context," she wrote. "But no one should expect Dick Cheney and his group [of neo-conservatives] to change. They will not." In a case of particularly bad timing, Cheney's image as a manipulative schemer was furthered again this week, just as he was trying to reassure Europeans about his moderation and commitment to multilateralism. In a new book on Tony Blair, author and Financial Times correspondent Philip Stephens depicts Cheney as the surprise guest at key meetings between Bush and the British prime minister. He quotes one Blair aide complaining that Cheney "waged a guerrilla war" against London's efforts to seek United Nations approval before the war. The book concludes that Cheney constantly "sought to undermine the prime minister privately", and quotes him telling another senior official more than six months before the war, "Once we have victory in Baghdad, all the critics will look like fools." But despite Saddam's capture, that "victory" still looks rather tenuous, and with recent polls showing Cheney's favorability rating at less than one-half of Bush's - a mere 20 percent and falling - so might the vice president's claim to the No 2 spot on the Republican ticket.
doing a lil digging I found out the last sitting President re-elected with a different VP was FDR. His VP, John Garner opposed FDR running for a 3rd term and quit politics. Before that you have to go back to Grant to find a re-elected President with a different VP running mate.
I think dumping Cheney would be extremely risky. It creates the impression an Administration out of control. However, it just occurs to me that they have the perfect excuse- Cheney's heart condition. If he stepped down for "health" reasons it would not look so bad. Does anyone know how many times a sitting President has switched Vice-Presidents and won re-election?
John McCain was campaigning for Bush in New Hampshire. I know McCain is running for Senate again, but his appearance did raise a few eyebrows (especially considering how the Bush campaign slandered him in 2000 South Carolina). A Bush/McCain ticket would be unstoppable. I despise Bush's politics, but there are few politicians I respect more than John McCain.
