Cheney for President (NYT op-ed)

[liberalpragmatist]

Don't worry, it's not quite what you think it is...

Cheney for President
By Ross Douthat

Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008.

<snip>

Imagine for a moment that he’d had that chance. Imagine that he’d damned the poll numbers, broken his oft-repeated pledge that he had no presidential ambitions of his own, and shouldered his way into the race. Imagine that Republican primary voters, more favorably disposed than most Americans to Cheney and the administration he served, had rewarded him with the nomination.

At the very least, a Cheney-Obama contest would have clarified conservatism’s present political predicament. In the wake of two straight drubbings at the polls, much of the American right has comforted itself with the idea that conservatives lost the country primarily because the Bush-era Republican Party spent too much money on social programs. And John McCain’s defeat has been taken as the vindication of this premise.

<snip>

As a candidate, Cheney would have doubtless been as disciplined and ideologically consistent as McCain was feckless. In debates with Barack Obama, he would have been as cuttingly effective as he was in his encounters with Joe Lieberman and John Edwards in 2000 and 2004 respectively. And when he went down to a landslide loss, the conservative movement might – might! – have been jolted into the kind of rethinking that’s necessary if it hopes to regain power.

>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/opinion/28douthat.htm...

Interesting argument. It might have been nice to see Obama win 45 states.

(Note: I'm not endorsing the author's views - he's the NYT's new conservative op-ed columnist.)

[XemaSab]

1. Linky?

n/t

[liberalpragmatist]

3. Fixed - nt

[XemaSab]

14. And PS: K&R

[rusty charly]

2. Woulds, shoulda, coulda.

[ProSense]

10. It's the same BS premise:

create scenarios that would have forced the GOP to reevaluate their dishonest, obstructionist and failed policies. Um, the GOP could give two shits about introspection. Douthat is serving the further disingenuous purpose of propping up Cheney as a catalyst for such rethinking. Casting Cheney as someone who would have been embraced by the GOP as a 2008 candidate suggests that Douthat has no clue about the severity of Cheney's actions and his role in torture.

[ProSense]

4. War Criminal for President.

Only an idiot GOP shill would write such a stupid headline and lede.

[Faygo Kid]

8. Methinks you missed the point.

He is basically saying put your money where your mouth is.

I think it's a terrific column. It's not pro Cheney. It's pro truth.

". . . “Real conservatism,” in this narrative, means a particular strain of right-wingery: a conservatism of supply-side economics and stress positions, uninterested in social policy and dismissive of libertarian qualms about the national-security state. And Dick Cheney happens to be its diamond-hard distillation. The former vice-president kept his distance from the Bush administration’s attempts at domestic reform, and he had little time for the idealistic, religiously infused side of his boss’s policy agenda. He was for tax cuts at home and pre-emptive warfare overseas; anything else he seemed to disdain as sentimentalism.

This is precisely the sort of conservatism that’s ascendant in today’s much-reduced Republican Party, from the talk radio dials to the party’s grassroots. And a Cheney-for-President campaign would have been an instructive test of its political viability. . . "

[ProSense]

11. No, I got it.

Same tired BS.

On edit, think about this:

As a candidate, Cheney would have doubtless been as disciplined and ideologically consistent as McCain was feckless.

That's classic.

[Xipe Totec]

5. He can't run for President for a third term n/t

[pnorman]

6. He coouldn't have run for President anyhow!

He had already served TWO terms in that position, and the 22nd Amendment forbids a third term!

pnorman

[and-justice-for-all]

7. Oh joy, our own Pinochet ...nt

[Faygo Kid]

9. Read the column!

Enough with being content with headlines. This is an excellent column, and it's not enough to read the damned headline without looking at the substance.

This is great stuff, and if you don't read it, you are missing out.

[ProSense]

12. No, it isn't

This is the GOP in reality.

[and-justice-for-all]

13. I was adding that Cheney would be our own Pinochet

IF he was the Prez...

[Still Sensible]

15. I think Cheney could have won Wyoming, Oklahoma, Utah

and maybe one or two more. Maybe a couple deep south states, but he'd have gotten slaughtered most everwhere else.