Dick Cheney is reminding Republicans that they need to defend themselves when attacked.
When President Obama released the Justice Department interrogation memos a month ago, Cheney denounced him for doing so. He explained why it was inappropriate and unwise to release such documents. But he did more. He didn't just defend himself and the administration in which he served. He fought back, and encouraged others to do so.
He challenged the president to release CIA memos evaluating the effectiveness of the enhanced interrogation techniques. He raised the question of whether congressional Democrats--Nancy Pelosi, for one--had known of, and at least tacitly approved of, the allegedly horrifying abuses of the allegedly lawless Bush administration.
Now, a month later, Pelosi is attacking career CIA officials for lying to Congress, and other Democrats are scrambling to distance themselves from her. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has pulled back on threats to prosecute Bush-era lawyers, reversed itself on releasing photos of alleged military abuse of prisoners, and embraced the use of military commissions to try captured terrorists. The administration now looks irresponsible when it lives up to candidate Obama's rhetoric, and hypocritical when it vindicates Bush policies the candidate attacked
The weakness of the GOP is the tepidness of its political leaders. No matter what the issue, there is always a Lincoln, Chaffee, a John McCain, an Arlen Spector (well, not anymore), a George Voinovich willing to betray the party on some groundless "principle." Often, the principle is little more than a combination of personal aggrandizement and a desire to shut off the latest media/Lefty political - but I repeat myself - firestorm. That's no way to build a majority.
The "torture" debate has gotten so out of hand because GOP'ers spent years absorbing and internalizing attacks about the "shredding of the Constitution" that they'd forgotten why enhanced interrogation was necessary in the first place. 90% of the time GOP politicians cringe under the spotlight, rather than fight back against the dishonest attakcs of the Left. The Cheney Way, which is hardly radical (he simply and plainly states his case. What a concept!) is the only way to deal with the bad faith arguments of our political foes who are either clueless or want to disarm and weaken the power of the United States.
And who cares if Cheney has a 19% approval rating? A lot of that is the result of dishonest political attacks and the simple, mindless repetition of the "fact" that his poll numbers are low. Why in the world should that matter to conservatives? Cheney will never be allowed to obtain approval because - like Rush, Ann Coulter, Gov. Palin, Justice Thomas, and a few others - he is one of our best spokesmen. The other side knows this and thus tries to dminish him at every turn. We should not accept this sort of marginalization of our own side.
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