AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION BECKONS…. Jon Stewart joked last week, “I don’t understand this. [Dick Cheney] is vice president for eight years, you barely see a whiff of him. He lives in some subterranean lair, literally has his house removed from Google Earth. Then, when he’s no longer accountable to the American people, he’s popping up everywhere. I can’t get him off my TV. He’s like the Mario Lopez of Doom now.”
Republicans on the Hill have, apparently, noticed the same thing. They’re not exactly pleased.
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.
Some of the GOP lawmakers were reluctant to criticize Cheney on the record, but a few didn’t hold back. Rep. John Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.) said Republicans would be better off if Cheney “wouldn’t be so public.” Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) would like to see Cheney stick to writing “a memoir.” Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) said Cheney “represents what’s behind us, not what’s ahead of us.”
One gets the sense that the DNC would welcome the chance to become Dick Cheney’s publicist. The more Cheney takes cheap shots at the president, the more Obama gets to respond. The result reinforces the notion that the political fight boils down to Obama’s approach vs. the Bush/Cheney approach.
That, of course, suits the White House just fine.
