Cheney on Iraq: 'Full Speed Ahead ... We're Not Running for Office'

ABCNews ^ | 11/3/06

[bnelson44]

Vice President Dick Cheney tells ABC's George Stephanopoulos the administration is going "full steam ahead" on its Iraq policy despite the election and mounting discontent with the war among voters of all stripes.

[SevenofNine]

He is not running for 2008 gig???

[M. Dodge Thomas]

He is not running for 2008 gig???

Presumably not, at least on a policy that’s savaging his own party.

One of the odder things to come out of Washington lately is the Presidents announcement that he would not be calling either Rumsfeld's or Cheney’s resignation; the Secretary of Defense is an appointive position and Rumsfeld serves at the President’s pleasure, but vice presidency is an elective office and a President can’t remove a VP, that’s a Congressional prerogative.

Normally, I would assume the Cheney’s position would be secure – even the largest possible Democratic majorities in the next Congress will be well short of those required for impeachment and conviction. But if things get much worse in Iraq and the administration is absolutely determined to continue on with the present course irrespective of public opinion it could end up placing a majority of Republican members of Congress in a politically impossible position: defend an Administration that that was essentially telling the voters that it will do as it pleases in matters of war and peace even if a substantial majority of the voters wish otherwise, or involve themselves in fratricidal party warfare from which only the Democrats can gain.

Worse, beyond that, you have the specter of full-blown constitutional crises if the administration decides to undertake something like a sustained air-campaign in Iran under conditions in which two thirds of the country and Congress have lost faith administration’s war-time leadership – I don’t know how that would play out, but I’m pretty certain it would not be to the advantage of the Republican party or the conservative movement generally.