Posted on 07/07/2004 10:41:28 AM PDT by areafiftyone
ALBANY — President Bush should consider dumping Vice President Dick Cheney from the Republican ticket this year, an influential former GOP senator said Wednesday. Alfonse D’Amato said Bush should consider putting Secretary of State Colin Powell or Sen. John McCain of Arizona on the GOP ticket. There was no immediate comment from the Bush-Cheney campaign. Bush has long maintained he wants Cheney to be his running mate. The D’Amato advice came one day after Bush’s Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, announced he had selected Sen. John Edwards to be his running mate. “Let me note that Vice President Cheney is a decent, honorable, and patriotic American, a man of great intellect, who has served the president and the nation with dedication,” D’Amato said in a statement released by his office. “But we should make no mistake, we are a nation at war with a vicious terrorist foe, and in war hard decisions must be made.” “As an observer of politics, I believe the president can guarantee his essential re-election by looking to several other notable individuals who would add a great dimension to his ticket as a running mate,” the New York Republican added. Placing Powell “first and foremost” on his wish list to replace Cheney, D’Amato said the retired general “would help galvanize the nation and offer a truly historic opportunity for American unity and pride.” McCain, said D’Amato, is “a genuine American hero who would also help bridge the political divide in our nation and assure the president’s re-election by a wide margin.” “While I believe George Bush will win re-election even without this bold stroke, he will insure a broader, deeper, more resonant reaffirmation of his leadership if he places his duty to continue as president above any one individual,” D’Amato said. “The president deserves more than simple re-election,” the former senator added. “He deserves a mandate to continue to lead this nation to peace and prosperity.” D’Amato, who is now a highly successful lobbyist and consultant, first raised the possibility of Bush dropping Cheney from the GOP ticket in an interview Tuesday night with the NY 1 cable news channel in New York City. D’Amato is a regular commentator for NY 1. In his NY 1 appearance, D’Amato said that while he realized his comments would “shock Republicans and probably get them angry,” he said, “I think we can do better.” The former senator said he believed Powell would run with Bush if the position was offered to him. That, said D’Amato, “would change politics in America for the better.” “Instead of millions of African-Americans having their votes taken for granted or just saying, ‘Republicans don’t care about us, they don’t reach out to us,’ this would send an incredible signal,” D’Amato said. “It would turn many of the battle (ground) states into tremendous wins for Republicans.” D’Amato said McCain, who had been unsuccessfully courted by Kerry as a running mate, would help the GOP win votes from independents and conservative “Reagan Democrats.” D’Amato, who lost his Senate seat in 1998 to Democrat Charles Schumer, is a political mentor to New York Gov. George Pataki, who is considered a potential 2008 GOP presidential candidate.
Originally published on July 7, 2004
Surely Colin has at least one or two conservative positions we could cheer about ....
Cheney took it easy on Leiberman(and still stomped him), otherwise it would have seemed like he was picking on a criple. That will not be the case with Fluffytas.
Perhaps victimized by entitlements?
I'd prefer to dump DuhAmato.
Al is looooooooooooooooooong gone.He's an ex and a voice in the wilderness.
Al has always been a bit obnoxious.
Good advice.
Kerry-Edwards represents something that is utterly brainless. Liberalism? No. Governor George Wallace referred to them as "silk stocking socialists". John-John are a bunch of spoiled rich kids. I do not even care to spell-out the kinds of vermin they would attract to government service/disservice.
Had the troopers been called, I believe it would have been the end of the Clintons, both of them.
Thanks for the reminder, Doug.
You are so right.
I had forgotten.
Shame on me.
I made call after call to D'Amato's office and they ended up hanging up on me after a shouting match. The trooper's testimony would have changed everything. Several years ago, I posted the troopers' affidavits here.
No shame on you. There was so much criminal activity, it is hard to remember all that happened.
I was so MAD at the time Doug.
I should have remembered. :)
Ruddy also has a good treatment of the little charade that was performed by Senator D'Amato's Banking Committee with respect to the conflict between the testimony of Chelsea Clinton's nanny, Helen Dickey, and Arkansas state troopers Roger Perry and Larry Patterson. Perry has said that he was called by Dickey around quitting time who hysterically told him that Foster had killed himself out in the parking lot of the White House. Perry immediately called Patterson and told him (Ruddy neglects to mention here, as he had done earlier in the book, that both have put their recollections into notarized, sworn affidavits.). Dickey, brought before the committee at the request of minority counsel Richard Ben Veniste, said she called well after ten o'clock and the story she told was only what the Park Police had reported. Ben Veniste then said that the troopers had been requested to come and tell their story, but they declined. They quickly denied that they had declined to testify, and Ruddy is correct to point out that the conflict could have very easily hashed out through use of the committee's subpoena power. He also exposes the transparent ruse by which the White House and Sprint thwarted any resolution of the question of when the call was made. If the troopers were correct, as certainly seems likely, then, at the very least, the White House knew about the death hours before they said they did.
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Ben Veniste was lying. I've met those troopers and had a few conversations with them. They absolutley wanted to testify. Helen Dickey was lying. I knew at the time that Clinton could have been, politically speaking, mortally wounded here. In one of the least reported but extremely important events, Ben Veniste and D'Amato combined to save him.
Exactly right.
Ben Veniste was lying then
just like he lies for his living.
I agree with you.
The testimony of the troopers
could have brought Clinton to
his knees, long before Monica
got on hers, and thus they could
have saved all of us the horror
story and damage done by Clinton.
Of course we would have then had algore.
Whatta putzhead.
"The Democrats invested millions getting him out of office. They trumped up "corruption" charges against him constantly and were finally successful.
If he was a Republican vote even 20% of the time (and he was much better than that), he was miles ahead of Chuck "The Schmuck" Shumer."
While I don't dispute any of it (its fact) D'Amato lost because of his own mouth running rampant in my opinion.
Like I said, the day he did that "Old McDonald" bs, I literally cringed. I thought "jackass". I suspect the voters of New York came to the same conclusion.
And he can't sing........LOL!
"The Gallup (search) poll people recently studied ideology in the USA and found out that only 19 percent of Americans consider themselves liberal. By contrast, 41 percent say they're conservative."
From O'Reilly's "Talking Points" on FoxNews.com
Check it out.
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