Day: May 12, 2009

Dick Cheney’s is the gift that keeps on giving. On Fox today, he really said this:

“The bottom line is we successfully defended the nation for seven and a half years against a follow-on attack to 9/11. That was a remarkable achievement,” he told FOX News. “I think that we are stripping ourselves of some of the capabilities that we used in order to block, if you will, or disrupt activities by Al Qaeda that would have led to additional attacks.”

The primary “additional capabilities” Cheney referred to that Pres. Obama has “stripped” from the U.S. approach to dealing with terrorists is torture. Without torture as an interrogation technique, therefore, Obama is making us vulnerable to new terror attacks.

It is hard to parse what Cheney hopes to gain from this media junket. It smacks of desperation, in part because of the contrast between Cheney’s sudden availability now and his lack of availability to the media when he was in office. But mostly because he is such an unpopular figure — his approval rating was 13 percent when he left office — that it would be smarter if left the defense of his torture regime to others.

And that may well be the problem. There is no one else who is will step forward with as full-throated a defense of Torquemada’s torture techniques as old Torquemada himself.

Florida is abuzz over Gov. Charlie Crist’s announcement that, as pretty much anticipated, he will not seek a second term as governor but will run for the seat being vacated (how can we tell?) by Freshman Sen. Mel Martinez. Both men are Republicans.

Crist’s decision puts a lot of offices in Florida in play for 2010, while leaving his own career in doubt. It’s not a slam-dunk for Crist by any means, since former House Speaker Marco Rubio, who has also declared his run for the Senate, is a much closer match for the far-right agenda the Rush Limbaugh-Sarah Palin-John Boehner-Sean Hannity-Newt Gingrich-Bobby Jindall-Mitch McConnell-Dick Cheney wing of the party favors. By the way, is there another wing of the Republican party? Didn’t think so, which is why the moderate Crist is going to have a hard time finding a base.

If he makes it out of the primary, Crist would face state Sen. Dan Gelber or U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek.

Meanwhile, the growing list of candidates for governor includes current state CFO Alex Sink, a Democrat who retired as a Bank of America president in the ’90s, back when banks were doing fine. Expect Republicans, who probably all hold stock in BofA, and/or sit on its board, to beat her up over that. On the Republican side, perennial candidate state Attorney General Bill McCollum says he’s got another race in him, hard as that is to believe.

More on this as the reactions roll in…