Cheney entered the arena this winter in a politically weak position after that election. His personal favorability ratings were and are still low. A Gallup poll in late March found that 30 percent of respondents gave him a favorable rating, while 63 percent rated him unfavorably.
That is why his high-profile defense of controversial Bush administration policies has caused queasiness among Republican political strategists. But Cheney remains powerful enough that most of his GOP critics are not willing to take him on in public. "The fact that most people want to talk [without attribution] shows what a problem it continues to be," said one Republican strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid. "Cheney continues to be a force among many members of our base, and while he is entirely unhelpful, no one has the standing to show him the door."
The guy's as popular as a fart in an elevator, but the base -- being so far out of the mainstream -- loves the guy, making him too powerful to stand up to. Other sources tell WaPo:
Even if he's right, he's absolutely the wrong messenger. We want Bush to be a very distant memory in the next election. The more Cheney is on the front burner, the more difficult it's going to be. --Unnamed GOP strategist.
-He's perfectly entitled to make his case, and given that Dick Cheney is as popular as Britney Spears at a Sunday school teacher convention, we hope he continues to be the face of the Republican Party. His continued presence reminds people that the GOP is unwilling to put forward new ideas or leadership, and so long as he continues to be the voice of the Republican cause, he ensures that the Republican Party will remain the party of the past. --Hari Sevugan, national press secretary for the Democratic National Committee.
Meanwhile, the unfortunate Mary Matalin tells the paper, "He says he's been through several of these cycles where the only thing that brings you back is to stand on your principles and apply those principles to the issues of the day... [Cheney's] not trying to be the party spokesman. It's not political to him. It's a policy thing, and you cannot deny that the debate is engaged and engaged on principle."
And those "principles" seem to be a desperate attempt to institute a "policy" of saving Dick Cheney's ass. He's been sounding more like a defendant than anything. He's been trying to steer the debate away from whether or not torture is a war crime and toward whether or not torture works.
Of course, whether it works is beside the point -- murder works, theft works, fraud works, but they're all still illegal. It's not torture resulting in failure that's the crime here, but torture in and of itself.
