Next Vice President: It is becoming increasingly likely that Vice President Dick Cheney will be forced to resign, either because he is indicted in the CIA Leak probe or because the super secret cabal of Old White Men who actually run the GOP – the ones who installed him as George Bush Jr.’s minder – have grown tired of his ruthless incompetence and will move to replace him before he and Bush squander what little hope remains for their party in 2008.
If Cheney goes, we’d be willing to wager that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) will be appointed as vice president. This will be a bitter pill for Team Bush, who have had a contentious relationship with the maverick senator dating back to McCain’s run against them in 2000 presidential primaries. But party loyalty trumps all, and it is more important for the GOP to ensure that McCain is position to become president if Bush is forced to resign, or – if Bush somehow hangs on to the end of his term – to give McCain the power of vice presidential incumbency when he runs for the big chair in 2008.
Farfetched, you say? A similar scenario played out during President Nixon’s scandals in the early 1970’s. In the midst of the Watergate investigations, Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign, on October 10, 1973, over unrelated charges of bribery and tax evasion in his past life as govenor of Maryland. Nixon quickly appointed the squeaky clean House Minority Leader Gerald Ford as vice president. Ford, of course, became president when Nixon resigned in August 1974.
In July, Sen. McCain worked against the Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who takes marching orders from the White House, to prevent a fillibuster of Bush’s judicial nominees by forming the “Gang of 14.” More recently, McCain staged an end-run around Frist and Bush by attaching an anti-torture amendment to a military appropriations bill. Bush has threatened to veto the bill – which would put him in the politically awkward position of signing his first-ever veto to in order quash restrictions on torture.
As the scandals around the CIA Leak and sleazy GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff come down on the heads of Bush, Cheney, Rove and the rest over the next weeks and months, John McCain – the leading anti-Bush rightwinger – will be the player to watch.
Hmmmm…if true, democrats better find a de facto leader/candidate-in-waiting, like immediately. McCain is attractive to the non-biblical republican base and a good many independents. If this happened, he alone may be able to mitigate their slide towards ’06 and stem any drive by democrats towards taking over the House. Still, it remains to be seen if the current republicans really are this saavy. The current crop prefer profits & biblical bluster over logic & good government.
(Americans always have the courage to open up a brave new frontier, but only Canadians know how to make it livable!)
The issue is not a partisan political one. Both Cheney and Bush are sleezeballs who should never have been supremed into their offices. McCain would be good for America and the world, not just Republicans, so there’s no need for a Democratic alternative…But even the wise, old white men aren’t this smart, so you’d better expect 3 more years of incompetence, disaster, ballooning defecits, cronyism, and the end of America.
McCain is the one Republican that the Democrats
would really fear coming into office, McCain can take votes from the middle, including independents and moderate democrats, along with the conservatives, who would see ham as a better alternative than the feared Hillary!!!