What do these words have in common?
Zmlknout (Czech)…Cállate (Spanish)…Cale a boca (Portuguese)…Se taire (French)…Inchide (Romanian)…Zašuti (Croatioin)…Stai zitto (Italian)…Hold kjeft (Norwegian)…and halt den Mund (German)?
The answer: they all are ways of saying “Shut up” in different languages. And according to The Hill, that’s the message Congressional Republicans are trying to communicate to former Vice President Dick Cheney who rather than being “stuck on stupid” is seemingly stuck in campaign 2008. Since leaving office he has given a series of high profile interviews talking about President Barack Obama and the new administration using language suggesting he thinks he’s still on the stump with Karl Rove advising him.
This doesn’t set well with Congressional Republicans who, above all, are trying to get across the concept that there is a new GOP that is now liberated from the unpopular Bush-Cheney administration. Conservatives in particular are stressing that they’re returning to traditional conservative values. The Hill reports:
Congressional Republicans are telling Dick Cheney to go back to his undisclosed location and leave them alone to rebuild the Republican Party without his input.
Displeased with the former vice-president’s recent media appearances, Republican lawmakers say he’s hurting GOP efforts to reinvent itself after back-to-back electoral drubbings.
The veep, who showed a penchant for secrecy during eight years in the White House,has popped up in media interviews to defend the Bush-Cheney record while suggesting that the country is not as safe under President Obama.
Rep. John Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.) said, “He became so unpopular while he was in the White House that it would probably be better for us politically if he wouldn’t be so public…But he has the right to speak out since he’s a private citizen.”
Another House Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity said he wasn’t surprised that Cheney has strongly criticized Obama early in his term, but argued that it’s not helping the GOP cause.
The legislator said Cheney, whose approval ratings were lower than President Bush’s during the last Congress, didn’t think through the political implications of going after Obama.
Cheney did “House Republicans no favors,” the lawmaker said, adding, “I could never understand him anyway.”
The problem for Republicans is: polls show that the vast majority of Americans do.
Cartoon via Cox & Forkum
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.