Ordinarily, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to Sally Quinn’s WaPo columns. Her reputation for being the social director of the Georgetown cocktail circuit is well deserved; Quinn’s columns tend to let readers know what Republican socialites in DC are chatting about. Hardly the stuff of Pulitzers.
But today’s Quinn piece is a little startling because, as she tells it, this is now the time to throw Dick Cheney under the bus.
The big question right now among Republicans is how to remove Vice President Cheney from office. Even before this week’s blockbuster series in The Post, discontent in Republican ranks was rising.
As the reputed architect of the war in Iraq, Cheney is viewed as toxic, and as the administration’s leading proponent of an attack on Iran, he is seen as dangerous. As long as he remains vice president, according to this thinking, he has the potential to drag down every member of the party — including the presidential nominee — in next year’s elections.
Removing a sitting vice president is not easy, but this may be the moment. I remember Barry Goldwater sitting in my parents’ living room in 1973, in the last days of Watergate, debating whether to lead a group of senior Republicans to the White House to tell President Nixon he had to go. His hesitation was that he felt loyalty to the president and the party. But in the end he felt a greater loyalty to his country, and he went to the White House.
Today, another group of party elders, led by Sen. John Warner of Virginia, could well do the same.
We’ve heard plenty of “dump Cheney” talk before, particularly in the run-up to the 2004 election, and all of it was kind of silly. And with 18 months left in the Bush presidency, I find it rather hard to believe we’ll see this kind of massive change. Indeed, if this week’s Post series makes one thing clear, it’s that Cheney runs this White House and is responsible for Bush’s agenda. It’s the kind of dynamic that offers good job security.
But Quinn’s column is interesting anyway. For one thing, it suggests the GOP establishment no longer has any use for the Bush White House. If Quinn is writing about it, Republicans in DC are talking about it.
For another, Quinn has already lined up Cheney’s successor.
The idea is to install a vice president who could beat the Democratic nominee in 2008. It’s unlikely that any of the top three Republican candidates — former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Sen. John McCain of Arizona or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — would want the job, for fear that association with Bush’s war would be the kiss of death.
Nor would any of them be that attractive to the president. Giuliani is too New York, too liberal. His reputation as a leader, forged on 9/11 and the days after, carries him only so far. McCain, who has always had a rocky relationship with the president, lost much of his support from moderate Democrats and independents (and from a fair amount of Republicans) when the Straight Talk Express started veering off course. And no matter what anyone says about how Romney’s religion doesn’t matter, being a Mormon is simply not acceptable to Bush’s base. Several right-wing evangelicals have told me they don’t see Mormons as “true Christians.”
That leaves Fred Thompson. Everybody loves Fred.
Atrios argues that for Republicans, “It’s actually a good idea.” I completely agree. Bush gets an heir apparent who is cut from the same Bush cloth; the GOP gets to exorcise Cheney’s demons; Thompson gets a head-start on his rivals. I wouldn’t be surprised if some in DC actually believe that the Republican Brand would improve if the party showed the courage to remove a destructive element from its ranks.
In reality, Cheney has helped undermine the GOP far more than the party probably realizes, but if Quinn’s right, the party’s insiders know something is amiss and they know Cheney bears some responsibility.
In my heart of hearts, I suspect every single Republican lawmaker on the Hill could go directly to the president and demand he make a change, and Bush would blow them off. But would a Cheney resignation help everyone? You bet.