Torture Debate Ensures That Cheney Will Continue To Define GOP

[babylonsister]

They are so screwn!

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/torture-debate-ensures-that-cheney-will-continue-to-define-gop/


Torture Debate Ensures That Cheney Will Continue To Define GOP


The other day I noted here that the economic crisis, by forcing a debate over who’s to blame for the whole mess, ensured that George W. Bush would continue to define the GOP in the public mind at a time when the party was hoping to rise from the wreckage of his personal unpopularity.

The torture debate has jump-started this dynamic again, but this time it involves an even less popular figure than Bush: Dick Cheney.

Just consider the optics of this. Even Republicans who backed Bush’s torture program have to be in total despair about the fact that Cheney has thrust himself into this debate in such a high-profile way. His growling visage is all over the cable nets, evoking some of the ugliest imagery of the Bush presidency: Secret prisons, faceless bureaucrats toiling in darkness to concoct legal justifications for torture, the previous administration’s brash unilateralism and swaggering defiance of international treaties.

Such memories are the last thing current Republicans need to be associated with at a time when the public is embracing Obama’s brand of internationalism as necessary to heal the damage the Bushies did to America’s global image.

To be sure, there are plenty of potential political pitfalls for Obama here. Cheney and company are working to shift the debate onto the narrow question of whether torture “works,” and as Ben Smith notes, this is probably not an argument Obama wants to have right now.

Nonetheless, Cheney’s high-profile entry into the debate is a net win for Obama and Dems. It makes this whole fight is about Bush’s — or, worse, Cheney’s — legacy, at a time when Republicans want it to be about the current Commander in Chief and whether he has what it takes to keep us safe.

[BurtWorm]

1. You could not ask for a better nemesis than that narcissistic paranoid Dickass Cheney.

The motherfucker.

[Solly Mack]

2. I've rather enjoyed Cheney being the face of the GOP for that exact reason

We've (almost) seen more of Cheney lately than during the Bush/Cheney years.

Cheney isn't exactly the poster child for warm and fuzzy.

[babylonsister]

4. No, he's not. I hope we see his mug daily, just as a little reminder

of what we're (NOT) missing.

[sufrommich]

3. Cheney as the face of the republican party, perhaps the only

other person who could do more damage to their image than Rush. Works for me.