Vice President Dick Cheney is now so far down in the polls that he should beware of sniffing dogs.
But that hasn’t stopped the administration from sending him out as the attack dog to go after Democrats for allegedly “rewriting history” on Iraq:
“Some of the most irresponsible comments have, of course, come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing force against Saddam Hussein,” Cheney said in remarks prepared for a GOP fundraiser.
Cheney’s attack was part of a GOP effort to push back against criticism on Iraq. Bush within the past week has made two speeches that painted Democrats as hypocrites for criticizing the Iraq war after earlier supporting the idea that Saddam should go. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld joined the offensive, singling out Democrats who in the past had depicted Saddam as a threat with weapons of mass destruction, including former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
The Republican National Committee also posted on its Web site a video compilation of past statements by prominent Democrats – including several 2008 presidential hopefuls – supporting a hard line against Saddam.
“These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence, and were free to draw their own conclusions. They arrived at the same judgment about Iraq’s capabilities and intentions that was made by this administration and by the previous administration,” Cheney said.
He said there was “broad-based, bipartisan agreement that Saddam Hussein was a threat, that he had violated U.N. Security Council Resolutions” and had weapons of mass destruction.
An even more blunt Cheney comment is here.
What can we make of this? Cheney is hugely unpopular, according to most polls. He is under a cloud with the Plamegate case touching on his closest advisor. And he’s now at the center of a growing controversy about oil company bigwigs having talked with him about energy policy, despite their denials to Congress:
WASHINGTON, Nov 16 (Reuters) – Democrats asked the U.S. attorney general on Wednesday to investigate whether top executives from big oil companies lied to Congress when they said their companies did not take part in Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force.
Democrats and environmental groups have fought unsuccessfully to find out which energy industry executives met privately with Cheney’s group in 2001 as it prepared a broad plan friendly to oil industry interests. Environmental groups said they were mostly excluded from the discussions.
At a Senate hearing last week on record oil profits, Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey asked five executives, “Did your company or any representatives in your companies participate in Vice President Cheney’s energy force in 2001?”
Each executive answered the question in the negative.
However, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that a White House document showed some companies did in fact meet with the task force. It said the document showed officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco, Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc., whose executives testified at last week’s Senate hearing, met with Cheney aides.
If there’s a Republican who is damaged goods right now, it is Dick Cheney. So why would the administration send him out in such high-profile situations to go on the attack against Democrats?
Why not get someone a bit more believable than Cheney is these days — such as Tom DeLay, Bill Frist or any woman asked to state her age?
Most likely Cheney is being sent out because the game plan continues to be to mobilize the GOP’s base — its big contributors (so TV ads can be run against the Democrats), its political choir (conducted by Rush and Sean). This has worked quite effectively in the past.
But, again, we point out that in the past the administration could count on a chunk of independents and centrists to supplement the GOP support. Polls show that these voters look at Cheney and are raising their eyebrows up to the tops of their heads. And: Cheney is now a red hot story for the press so you can expect more investigative pieces on matters surrounding him, if there are some out there that can be investigated.
So it doesn’t appear as if it’s the wisest move, unless they know something none of the rest of us know and another shoe is going to drop elsewhere. If not, the administration would appear to be in full-fledged, circle-the-wagons campaign mode in an effort to turn around polls showing Americans from BOTH parties and independents now have doubts about the excecution of the war and how we got into it.
Prediction: This will either help Bush a bit in the polls, as his base becomes excited about yet another partisan battle with Democrats or BADLY backfire causing a greater loss of support…and the GOP as a party facing some painful political consequences in 2006.
UPDATE: When Cheney finally delivered his remarks, you could predict that they would be labelled “dishonest and reprehensible” by some of his critics — which is precisely what he calls them (“them” meaning people with a D in front of their party):
WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday added his voice to the chorus of Republican criticism of Democrats who contend the Bush administration manipulated intelligence on Iraq.
That accusation, he said, “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.”
“Some of the most irresponsible comments have, of course, come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing force against Saddam Hussein,” Cheney told the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, a conservative policy group.
Democrats shot back immediately, with the party’s 2004 presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, saying “it is hard to name a government official with less credibility on Iraq” than Cheney.
UPDATE II: Josh Marshall: “You can see pretty clearly that Karl Rove is back in the saddle because what we’re seeing now is straight from the Karl Rove play book. You throw them off balance by charging directly into their line of fire….But don’t forget that this latest gambit is only the first flash of what we’ll see from this crew as they swing over the downward arc of Fortune’s wheel.