Cheney to be cut from the ticket?

All Bush has to do to guarantee reelection is drop Cheney and add Guiliani.

What a nightmare. I might not sleep tonight.

 

Bush says no and given the way he makes up his mind, I beleive him. Cheney, on the other hand, has to decide for himself.

 

"I won't negotiate with myself."

I guess some might view Bush's unwillingness to EVER change his mind as a demonstration of conviction. I view it as an almost pathoigcal stubborness that pushes his ideology regardless of whether or not reality reveals it to be sound.

Ironically, O'Neill's prediction in the article I linked was EXACTLY what Greenspan was talking about today regarding Social Security.

 

Greenspan also wants the tax cuts to be made permanent, so there you go. Wasn't O'Neill against them all together?

 

Just a heads up, Alex, but JC Watts is a black man. I calculate the odds of the Republicans nominating a black man for president or vice president within the next 1,000 years to be about 1 in 1.0568 X 10^28

 

No. O'Neill thought the permanent tax cuts were a good idea once the economy stabilized. Which is what Greenspan said today.

You haven't read The Price Of Loyality, I guess.

 

Nope. That's the reason for the question.

 

Either buy a copy or check it out at the library. It offers an amazing insight into the Bush adminstration from a long-time Republican insider who was brought in by his very close friends Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

I got the impression from reading the book that Rumsfeld and O'Neill are still friends, but that the relationship between Cheney and O'Neill is over.

 

Which will still happen before the Dems get one elected...

 

Well, the Democrats have already nominated a woman and a Jew, and actually had a Catholic who won way back in 1960.

I do think it'll be a long time before either party nominates a black pres or veep candidate though.

 

There are at least 3 black Republicans (Watts, Powell, Rice) who are infinitely more qualified and electable for Pres/VP than any black Democrat.

 

From my POV, Cheney is the Bush Administration, so he's not going anywhere except back out on the campaign trail. Unless his heart actually sidelines him, and it hasn't so far in the past four years (although I do have him in my ghoul pool, just in case).

And if his heart does sideline him, the VP won't be Rudy. Despite the R, he's got too many positions that run counter to what the party faithful want.

Interestingly enough, this sort of talk only comes up with tickets that find themselves in trouble.

 

Sad. Your post, I mean.

 

What's sad is that I think it's true. For both parties.

 

It was a Republican who gave us our first female Supreme Court justice. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see a black VP candidate on the Republican ticket sometime in the next few elections.

As for those who think Cheney will remain on the ticket because he's the one pulling all the levers, well, he can still pull a few levers from a position other than VP. If Kerry continues to lead in the polls I wouldn't be surprised to see a Bush/Giuliani run. Cheney will take one for the team (probably claiming medical reasons) and still remain close to Bush. Hell, he could even take a seat on that ridiculous Defense Advisory Board. They seem to be having enough influence for his liking these days.

 

You know, I've never thought about it that way, but (except for including Rice) you've got a good point. Which black Dem would be the best pick for VP? Maybe I'm wrong, but it would be someone only we political geeks know about, like Harold Ford. What happened? Is it the more radical interpretation of the VRA from Bush I, which isolated black pols?

OTOH, the Dems have the best pick of ANY minority, Bill Richardson. He combines appointed and elected positions on his resume in a really compelling way.

 

Unfortunately, I think Alex is actually correct on this point, but for all the wrong reasons. The Republican Party is more likely to place a figurehead in a semi-but-not-too powerful position in an effort to win votes they don't already have. This does not however mean that the Republican party platform is magically transformed into one that deals appropriately with race relations issues in America.

Back to the topic at hand, removing Cheney is a high stakes gamble for the Republicans, but one perhaps worth taking. On the one hand it makes it look like Bush is shedding the Iraqi hawks (see, e.g., Richarde Perle's resignation) and could be interpreted as a passive acknowledgement of a policy error. On the other hand, if spun correctly, Cheney voluntarily stepping down for health related reasons so that Guiliani can take his place on the ticket could spell an electoral nightmare for any Democratic candidate.

 

I don't think an Eye-talian Papist with a couple of divorces on his resume will be quite the electoral slamdunk that you think it will be.

 

It may be the only way to get him a Presidential nomination. Because of the problems you point out, he wouldn't be a slamdunk in the primaries. An inside track as a quasi-incumbent would be a huge boost for him. Of course, a pessimist would say that a Bush second term might bring him down just as much.

I'd fight like hell for him, though.

 

First, I actually would not be surprised to see in any election from here on a black, a hispanic, a woman, etc. as a VP candidate, from either party (given the availablility of appropriate individuals). I do imagine it would be a long, long time before they received the Presidential nomination, however.

That said, the Republican Party likes having Cheney on the ticket right now, because that leaves the 2008 Presidential race wide open for all interested Republicans. To replace him would be an automatic annointing of the likely nominee in 2008, and I simply do not think that there is any Republican who has enough broad support within the party to merit that annointing, nor do any of them necessarily want to tie themselves to a President that does not exactly have stellar appropal ratings (they will remember how much Clinton hurt Gore). The potential contenders may prefer to come into the 2008 with a relatively clean slate.

Though I can imagine lots of Republicans desiring the Giuliani cachet to help the ticket, I do not think they envision Giuliani as the head of the Republican party and President of the United States.

 

The Economist sugegsted Colorado Gov. Bill Owens as a possible Cheney replacement.

 

The Economist has not been leaving any Bush orifice unfilled, of late. Dumping Cheney would be a brilliant political move. However, Bush is a political ideolog. I think he should pick up those stalwart Republicans Hillary Clinton or Joseph Liebermann. Much closer in ideology than Owens or Giuliani.