The Cheney taint?

By David Limbaugh

If the game of politics were fiction it would be amusing to watch the
Democrats scurrying around in a desperate dither over George W. Bush’s
decision to choose Dick Cheney as his running mate.

When Bush first announced his choice, Democrats couldn’t say enough
nice things about Cheney. “He’s a very nice guy, smart, honest.” The
closest they came to being negative was to say he was dull, and
therefore wouldn’t add much to the ticket. Oh yes, and there were the
health problems, too.

Once the initial shock wore off, it didn’t take the war room long to
devise a strategy to demonize the former Secretary of Defense. Of
course, anyone with half a brain knows that the point of demonizing
Cheney is to taint Bush. Imagine that. Tainting Bush by association with
one of the most decent men to serve in the public sector in years.

Their angle was creative, albeit transparent. The Cheney selection,
ironically, would allow them to chip away at the one thing about Bush
that has been in their craw from the beginning. He has been fraudulently
passing himself off as compassionate. To liberals, you see,
“compassionate conservatism” is an oxymoron. It is no less than a cosmic
injustice for a conservative Republican to masquerade as a caring person
— to trespass on liberal terrain.

Democrats thought they’d “outed” Bush by underscoring his appearance
at Bob Jones University and his general campaign tactics in South
Carolina, but their attempts at smear just didn’t stick to Dubya. Cheney
would become Bush’s Achilles’ heel regarding the compassion issue. Oh
sure, Cheney appears to be a nice guy, but look at his voting record.
The war room calculated that all they had to do to destroy Bush was to
show that Cheney was a genuine conservative, because conservatism is
manifestly evil. How’s that for arrogance?

So, in rigid lockstep, the Democrat shills have been popping up all
over talk television decrying Cheney’s mean-spirited, anachronistic
record. They no longer even try to hide their contempt. One pleasant
congresswoman, as if describing Satan incarnate, sneered, “Cheney’s
anti-choice, he’s opposed to gun-control, he’s anti-environment, he’s
against statistically measuring the census (boy, that’s a zinger!), and
he voted for Clarence Thomas.” She forgot to mention that his wife,
Lynne Cheney, is a fire-breathing reactionary in her own right. Others
have since dutifully pointed that out.

The war-room-talking-point-memo-breathing congresswoman added that
Cheney also voted against the Department of Education (praise the Lord),
and — get this — he voted against international family planning. Yes,
she actually said that with a straight face. I concede that this final
revelation is darn near enough to make me pack my bags and move to
Chicago so I can register in Cook County and vote for Bush-Cheney a
couple hundred times in November.

The ingenuous war room thinks they’ve caught Bush in a double-trap.
Through Cheney they’ve exposed Bush both as a true conservative and a
liar, because he’s been fibbing about his conservatism.

They are wrong on both counts. Bush never denied being conservative.
To him there is no contradiction between compassion and conservatism.
Bush stands for precisely the same things Cheney has voted for. Bush has
never pretended to be anything but pro-life, pro-Second Amendment,
pro-Clarence Thomas, pro-real census counting and pro-decentralizing
federal control over education.

Some commentators have observed that Bush’s selection speaks well for
Bush in that it shows he’s comfortable enough with himself to pick
someone with greater credentials than his own. Yes, but it also shows
that for all the Democrat hype about Bush being more of a politician
than a statesman (a Clintonian politician) he is just the opposite. In
picking Cheney, he’s proven he’s interested not in pizzazz but
substance. What a refreshing attitude compared to the past eight years.

The Democrats’ frantic reaction to Cheney tells us even more about
them. Through the Clinton years they have become comfortably smug about
the superiority of their worldview — so smug that they are now willing
to declare all dissenters from it — like Cheney — evil.

Well, the war room better be polishing up their nukes, because Bush’s
bold Cheney decision indicates that he means business and is ready to
govern. If I were in the war room, I’d be nervous, too.

David Limbaugh

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is "Guilty By Reason of Insanity." Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. Read more of David Limbaugh's articles here.