Getting what one asks for
February 28, 2006
Insight magazine is reporting that Vice President Cheney is thought by certain 'senior Republican sources' to be planning to retire after the next election.
This, of course, supports a hypothesis I have been formulating for several years now, that the GOP presidential candidate of 2008 would be a sitting veep who was not Dick Cheney. As I've written earlier, the power of incumbency is not a thing to be cast aside lightly, just because the President is a second termer, and the VP not inclined to run. And, as I've written, it wouldn't seem all that odd, given the current VP's pacemaker, of which so much has been made in the press. Democrats and the afore-mentioned press could of course be counted on to claim it was all just a nefarious, moustache-twirling plot to anoint the next GOP contender, but then they would do that even if Cheney, God forbid, were to suffer a dramatic and catastrophic health crisis, which forced his resignation. The point is, it is plausible enough for sane people, and may even end up having the benefit of being true.
There are rumors floating around about a falling out of sorts between the staffs of the president and the VP, over the recent press conniption over Mr. Cheney's hunting accident, which of course may or may not be true. Personally, part of me hopes it is so, because then, when Cheney steps aside to make room for the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, it will be the Washington Press Corps that caused it. But I will of course be glad to take it anyway it comes. There is also the potential Karmic retribution against the rest of the mainstream press, liberals all, for the public lynching of Cheney aide Scooter Libby we've all heard so much about. That case should also be coming to a head right about the end of the year, when the 2006 election will be over and the getting by Cheney would be the most good.
As I have made clear, I already believed Cheney would find a reason to step aside before the end of the Bush II administration, but I have to admit: It couldn't have happened to a better bunch of guys to be about to seem to have caused the predicament they will face in '08, just by doing what they do naturally: trying to bring down the GOP president and VP by any means possible.
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