Dick Cheney

Scott Brown’s victory happened for a reason.

Massachusetts progressives were shell-shocked last Tuesday when it was announced that Martha Coakley had conceded the US Senate election to Brown. It’s been a couple of days, and it still hasn’t sunk in for them.

Progressives across the country know that Brown’s victory poses long-term problems for the left. Forget about what it portends for the 2010 midterms and the 2012 Presidential election. Brown’s win horrifies the left because he has weakened the power of progressive stereotyping.

Progressive bloggers and Democratic apparatchiks threw everything they could at Brown—and none of it stuck. He was accused of misogyny, homophobia, and obedience to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh—and a majority of voters in the country’s bluest state failed to buy any of it.

Brown’s victory proves that the old insults don’t work anymore. If you’re a Republican candidate who focuses on real issues, your ideological adversaries will be reduced to branding you a teabagging extremist instead of developing substantive responses to your ideas. If you connect with the voters, your ideological adversaries will find themselves compelled to demonize those voters.

If Barack Obama’s 2008 victory represented the shattering of old racial barriers, Brown’s victory represents the shattering of old ideological barriers. Thanks to Brown, blue-state conservatives and Republicans can now live their lives openly, unafraid of idiotic insults and scurrilous smears.

There was a collective sigh of relief from the blue-state right on Tuesday night. For years, conservatives and Republicans in overwhelmingly Democratic states had to live their lives in fear and shame, having been convicted without trial on charges of ignorance and intolerance. They suffered in silence, realizing that they could not convince ideologically rigid progressives that they too, believed in equality, fairness and diversity, disagreeing only on the manner through which such goals should be achieved.

Now, in the wake of Brown’s victory, they can finally live in peace and freedom, acknowledging their true selves and affirming their true identities. They can finally march down the street in a parade of patriotic pride.

Brown will forever be a hero to blue-state conservatives. He embodies what conservatism actually is: upbeat, hopeful, forward-thinking, energetic. For too long, progressive activists and Democratic strategists have raised the specter of sulking, snarling, scowling Southern conservatives as a means of scaring people away from conservative and Republican ideas; they will no longer be able to get away with such attacks. Brown has demonstrated that an optimistic person from any part of the country can find merit in the right’s core philosophy.

Brown connected with the young, with suburbanites, with people who had long since checked out of politics. He had a compelling message that he delivered with skill—and he defeated Coakley by sheer force of will.

There are millions of “Scott Brown Republicans” in this country. They embrace conservatism because they recognize that the right’s core principles, when adhered to, result in true prosperity and true progress. They know that income tax reduction creates the rising tide that lifts all boats. They know that sometimes, those who defend us must go the extra mile in order to guarantee our safety.  They know that government is necessary, but its size, scope and power must always have clear limits. They know that judges who idealize the Constitution are preferable to judges who ignore it. Above all, they know that America is, was, and will always be the last, best hope of mankind.

“Scott Brown conservatism” is what this country needs, what this country wants, what this country must have. “Scott Brown conservatism” is the sort of clean conservatism that can attract rather than repel, that can heal rather than wound, that can rebuild rather than destroy. “Scott Brown conservatism” is real compassionate conservatism, as opposed to the hyped-up hooey of ten years ago.

“Scott Brown conservatism” doesn’t care who or what you are, not even what party you belong to, so long as you love the Constitution and the freedoms and principles that august document stands for. “Scott Brown conservatism” is more than just “conservatism that can win again”—heck, it already has won, and will continue to win in the future.

Scott Brown’s victory happened for a reason. “Scott Brown conservatism” exists for the reason—to renew America, to protect and preserve this country’s greatness, and to add just a little more light to the shining city on a hill.

www.blogtalkradio.com/drtucker

In his Pulitzer-winning biography, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, Barton Gellman recounts a conversation between former vice president Dan Quayle and newly sworn-in VP Dick Cheney:

“Dick, you know, you're going to be doing a lot of this international traveling, you're going to be doing all this political fundraising,” Quayle [said]. “I mean, this is what vice presidents do. We’ve all done it. You go back and look at what I did, or what Gore did.”

Cheney did that thing he does with one raised eyebrow, a smile on just the left side of his face.

“I have a different understanding with the president,” he said.

What exactly what was this "different understanding"? Gellman captures it perfectly in another reported nugget:

Days after [Hurricane Katrina] had passed, when he finally returned to Washington from Crawford, [President] Bush assembled his senior staff in the Oval Office. He was going to form a cabinet-level task force, he said.

“I asked Dick if he'd be interested in spearheading this,” Bush announced. “Let’s just say I didn’t get the most positive response.” Bush nodded ironically toward the vice president, putting on a show for the others: Card, Rove, Bartlett, Condi Rice. His expression, the tone of voice, had a hint of edge. Can you believe this guy?. . . .

“Will you at least go do a fact-finding trip for us?” Bush asked.

“That’ll probably be the extent of it, Mr. President, unless you order otherwise,” Cheney replied.

Leave aside for the moment whether you like or agree with Cheney. Can't we all appreciate the sui generis power he wielded? The consequence-free autonomy? The chutzpah? Consider:

• He maneuvered the search committee he was leading to select a vice presidential candidate for then-Governor Bush such that he himself became the running mate—while maintaining a treasure trove of personal information about his would-be competitors.

• He argued, all the way to the Supreme Court, his right to keep private the names of those with whom he had devised a national energy strategy.

• He, rather than the president, issued the order to shoot down the unknown jetliner racing toward Washington on 9/11.

• He unilaterally exempted his office from the presidential order that requires executive branch personnel either to submit periodic reports on the classified information held in their offices, or to allow National Archives staff to conduct in-office inspections.

• He accidentally shot a friend in the face while quail hunting, and kept the incident under wraps for a full day.

• He, rather than the president, ordered the CIA to withhold information about a secret counterrrorism program from Congress.

Others have written at length about Cheney's predilection for secrecy and executive power. But what fascinates me is Cheney's psychology. He doesn't care what you think. He's a millionaire in his 60s who's survived four heart attacks. He does what he wants, when he wants, and lets the chips fall where they may (for instance, a 13% approval rating upon leaving office).

There's something wondrous, if not necessarily wonderful, about that.

Dick Cheney had earlier claimed that some classified CIA documents supported his contention that torture provided information which prevented a terrorist attack, contradicting a report from the CIA’s inspector general. A few days ago Senator Carl Levin reviewed the documents and stated that Cheney’s claims about the classified documents were untrue. Greg Sargent has reviewed an interview Cheney gave with Fox last night, finding that Cheney has backed away from his claims:

There’s a very revealing moment buried in an interview that Dick Cheney gave to Fox News last night that really gives away his game plan on torture.

Specifically: Cheney seemed to edge away from the claim that the documents he’s asking the CIA to declassify will prove unequivocally that torture worked.

The key moment came when his interviewer said: “You want some documents declassified having to do with waterboarding.” Cheney replied:

“Yes, but the way I would describe them is they have to do with the detainee program, the interrogation program. It’s not just waterboarding. It’s the interrogation program that we used for high-value detainees. There were two reports done that summarize what we learned from that program, and I think they provide a balanced view.”

Bear with me here, because this is crucial. Cheney is carefully saying that the documents summarize what we learned from the overall interrogation program. Torture, of course, was only a component of that program. So he’s clearly saying that the docs summarize what was learned from a program that included non-torture techniques, too.

Here’s why this is important. It dovetails precisely with what Senator Carl Levin, who has also seen these docs, says about them. Levin claims the docs don’t do anything to “connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of the abusive techniques.”

My bet is Cheney is planning to cite the valuable intel in the docs and say that the program — of which torture was only a part — was responsible for producing it. He’ll fudge the question of whether the torture itself was actually responsible for generating that information. Cheney is as experienced as any Washington hand at using precise language to obfsucate, and this is the game plan. You heard it here first.

In his FNS interview today, Mitt Romney mentioned his NYT Op-ed from late last year:

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

While it never should have come to this, it's refreshing to hear Republicans talking about letting losers fail.  Between Romney and Dick Cheney, it's almost looking like we can get the GOP away from Bailouts.  To Paraphrase Rick Santelli, Governor Palin are you listening?!?

In this interview with Larry Kudlow yesterday, Dick Cheney said about TARP:

KUDLOW: But did you anticipate the degree of government control over the banks? No question throwing a safety net from Federal Reserve liquidity was appropriate. I don’t think any economist left or right disagrees with that. On the other hand, what we’ve seen now is that this Congress has moved in to declare, for example, compensation and pay limits, repurchase agreements, dividend policies, merger and acquisition policies. You yourself know these things because you were a CEO of a big company once upon a time. Did you anticipate how Congress would move in to take control of the banks when you made these initial loans?CHENEY: No, I don’t believe we did. I don’t recall any debate within the administration. There may have been some over at Treasury or someplace that focused on the extent of which government would try to control these institutions once they provided financing for them. You know, I’ve got experiences going back to the wage price controls in the Nixon administration where, in effect, we had what I think was a terrible mistake, in that case a Republican administration, where moved in and tried to control the wages, prices and profits of every enterprise in America. It was a huge mistake. We finally got out of it, but it took a long time to do it, and it does a lot of damage.

If you liked that, just wait, it gets better:

CHENEY: Well, some of us at the time wanted GM to go bankrupt, go to Chapter 11.KUDLOW: Were you in that camp?CHENEY: I was.

Essentially, Cheney is saying that he was against bailout nation and Bush overruled him.  I'm not surprised.  Cheney has always been a much more genuine small-govt. guy than Bush ever was.

That said, maybe Quinn Hillyer was right: Cheney, not Bush, should have been President!!!

I loved what Dennis Miller said tonight on his radio show regarding today's 'DC grudge match' between Obama and Cheney.

 He ( Miller)  reminded everyone of an NFL defensive strategy whereby someone on the defense is assigned to "trail" a star halfback on the offense at all times- Miller used Ladanian Tomlinson of the San Diego Chargers as the example. The defensive man's sole assignment is to "trail" the running back wherever he goes,whether he gets the ball or not. If Tomlinson goes right, the assigned D-back goes right too, if left...well...you get the picture...

Miller said that Cheney should be assigned by the GOP to constantly "trail" Obama. If Obama speaks, Cheney speaks 30 seconds later, thereby "trailing" BO wherever he goes and whatever he says, for the instant response.

Pop!

That, Miller said, would drive the DNC crazy.  

Another brilliant equation by the ebullient Miller!

Franklin Roosevelt famously said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"

Might've made a great pep talk at the depths of the Great Depression, but it's lousy reasoning.  There are always plenty of things to fear.

Of course, being down on fear seems to be what the cool kids in class are into these days. Take this sunday newspaper columm.

Now President Obama has joined the bandwagon.

 our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight.....

Perhaps in the relaxed light of today's hindsight, Bush & Cheney made prompt decisions which we are not fully satisfied with now. Then again, when lower Manhattan was covered in ash Professor Obama was nearly a thousand miles away deconstructing the Consitution for his pupils. 

Fear is an acknowledgment of reality.  When we describe someone as "fearless", often it is a synonym for "foolhardy".  Of course, an absence of fear can yield inertia as well as impulsiveness. One who lacks fear may get smug, arrogant or fall into the trap of "paralysis by analysis" since the perceived danger seems far off and the discomfort of an effective response quite immediate.

The Obama team may argue our foreign policy was driven by fear. But in its most controversial aspect--the war in Iraq--it is hard to argue the ultimate decision was one made rashly or impulsively, as the run-up to war was lengthy and deliberate.    

Revisionism by the President today will not change the fact that among those who voted for war were  Joe Biden, Harry Reid and Chris Dodd.  . Does the President suggest these "leaders" are easily frightened?

No. this is a rhetorical flourish designed to appeal to those in the chattering classes who think sleep deprivation of a terrorist is a brilliant strategy grounded in behavioral science when a Democrat uses it, and is a descent into unspeakable barbarity when it is employed by a Republican.

Let's face it. President Obama is eager to trade in the currency of fear when he thinks it will buy him something he wants.

Consider the stimulus bill 

Obama painted a bleak picture if lawmakers do nothing.

 

In an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, the president argued that each day without his stimulus package, Americans lose more jobs, savings and homes. His message came as congressional leaders struggle to control the huge stimulus bill that's been growing larger by the day in the Senate. The addition of a new tax break for homebuyers Wednesday evening sent the price tag well past $900 billion.

"This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse," Obama wrote in the newspaper piece

 

 or what his allies say about global warming.

Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid

Hmm, can we waterboard an oil refinery and get it tell us how to stop greenhouse gas production?

No, it appears some fear is more equal than others.

The sad thing is that if one argues American's foreign policy over the past decade was driven by fear, our economic system was marked by the removal of fear. Which removed accountability and restraint.

I turn to Robert Rodriguez's prescient article in the summer of 2007.

My talk today, Absence of Fear, is a follow up and expansion of the Special Commentary section that appeared in my March 31, 2007 shareholder reports. It will focus on the concept of RISK since there appears to be little concern about risk in the financial markets currently. My goal is not to scare or sensationalize, but to get investors to consider various risks and ask the basic question, "Am I being sufficiently compensated for these apparent risks?" ..

We are concerned that, after many years of an excessively easy monetary Fed policy, a bubble of massive proportions has been created in the housing market. Many experts believe that the housing cycle is at or nearing a trough or at least is at a stable level. We are not of this opinion. We do not believe you inflate prices and demand over at least a decade and then this over stimulation is corrected in barely 18 months. We are of the opinion that this bubble has infected many areas of the financial economy. I will detail more of this in the fixed income portion of my speech.

This article continues to describe the various iterations of the bubble and its bursting. But one thing is apparent. None of the participants were sufficiently fearful of the market. Home buyers assumed prices would increase forever. and that the refi window could never close. Mortgage brokers assumed they could always sell their paper. Rating agencies assumed that A paper circa 2005 was like A paper circa 2000.  Holders of mortgage bonds assumed their losses could always be covered by credit default swaps.  Rodriguez points to one systemic problem built into the process that turned out not to remove risk, but to conceal it.

We are of the opinion that the distancing of the borrower from the lender has contributed to the development of lax underwriting standards. Each participant, in the securitization/origination process, takes their ounce of payment, but no one truly worries about the underlying credit quality since the loan will be sold.....Finally, the securitization market and the multiplicity of products that have been created have never been truly tested in a major credit contraction like that of 1990-94. This is because most of today's securitization products did not exist back then

(Note: Evidently word of this information failed to reach Banking Committee Chairman Dodd at his campaign HQ in Des Moines)

Warren Buffet is credited with the line " be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others were greedy".  Seeing people lose their homes in the midst of the great real estate bubble I fully bought into this myself in the past decade. Alas, the entire financial economy pushed fear to the exits in the headlong pursuit of profit. In trying to create mechanisms to diffuse risk, they encouraged more of it.  

And lest this be thought of as an anti-capitalist rant, the politicians who brought you the Community Reinvestment Act  had no fear at all that our economy could absorb a virtually unlimited amount of subprime lending without adverse results. And the politicians all prided themselves with having a "light touch" as to regulation 

What would have happened if our private sector economy had been as driven by fear in the past decade as our foreign policy?  I would suggest we wouldn't be facing the debacle we stumbled into because we lacked fear.

President Obama wants to correct this situation. He wants to banish both greed and risk from the commercial marketplace.  There is an unpleasant word for this. though.

Socialism. 

See Here Umm...Matty, has the thought occurred to you that we might want to mete out worse punishments/interrogation methods for hardcore terrorists than we would for some random street thug?!?

That's just my first thought.

Greetings from New York City (and yes, I was at THAT YANKEE GAME yesterday) .

Sooo...I'm walking back to my parents' place this afternoon minding my own business.  All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I stumble upon a leftist protest urging President Obama to prosecute 43 and his advisors.  One of the leftists tried to hand me some literature.

I made direct eye contact and spit in his face.

It was one of the most emotionally satisfying things I've ever done.

I hope this helps.

That is all.

Cahnman out.

Chris at Unequivocal Notion posits

• Obama picked up Joe Biden not because it'd excite the base, but because Joe Biden will be able to help Obama govern.

• McCain picked up Sarah Palin because it'd excite the base, not because Sarah Palin will be able to help McCain govern.

If only Republicans put as much effort into governing as they put into running campaigns. I think that the election and reelection of G.W. Bush proved that Republicans only care about winning elections, not about actually governing this country.

So Barack Obama cared about governing because he chose a VP with a lot more experience than him who could help him manage the country , particularly on tough foreign policy matters. So, what the left is saying is that Obama is noble for doing what the left has accused President Bush in doing by choosing Dick Cheney. Would that be the change we can believe in?

I think that Senator McCain did choose someone who could help him govern, as well as win the election, and yes, step in should something happen to him. McCain really doesn't need a Foreign Policy wonk on his ticket. John McCain knows foreign policy quite well, thank you very much.

However, outside of the military, McCain doesn't have much executive experience, Governor Palin does. She also brings a strong understanding of energy issues that in a time when energy is such a problem for our country is vitally important.

I think Senator McCain sees a troubling situation in Washington, and a place that's in desperate need of reform. Those who are part of official Washington are, for the most part, part of the problem. They'd be half-hearted in fighting big spending at best. If something should happen to him, Washington would just be business as usual. There are some exceptions to this, but good reformers have spent a lot more time tilting at windmills that whether they could handle the executive responsibilities of the Presidency.

Sarah Palin has experience cutting spending and reforming ethics in her home state. She's had to work with a legislature. She's had to actually govern departments and balance budgets. She's shown the ability to take bold steps for reform. She's shaken things up in Alaska and I think what Senator McCain wants to do when he's elected President.  

The Senate is not the fount of all wisdom, neither Washington, DC. Having been there for 36 years doesn't mean that you'll make the right decision when crisis strikes. One of America's most experienced Presidents was James Buchanan, Buchanan had six terms in the House, 2 1/2 terms in the Senate, and a 2 year stint as Ambassador to Russia and Minister to Great Britain, and 4 years as Secretary of State, including during the Mexican-American war. He was a great Washington insider and under his Administration, the Union split apart and he was impotent to stop it.

McCain understands that Washington is broken, and if you're going to fix a dysfunctional system,  you probably need someone from outside that system to help. Buchanan proves that experience as a Washington insider won't make you a great President, but tenacity, courage, and dedication to service are at the foundation of great leadership. Sarah Palin has these qualities in spades.