CNN:
A one-time aide to former Vice President Dick Cheney suggested Sunday that recent reports about Cheney and the CIA are a distraction designed to avert attention away from the policy struggles of the Obama administration.
“This is very suspect timing,” Republican strategist and former Cheney adviser Mary Matalin said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “The president’s agenda is almost in shambles. His [poll] numbers are dropping. Isn’t it coincidental; they gin up a Cheney story.”
Matalin also said that the Executive branch has some authority under the nation’s intelligence laws to not disclose information to Congress under certain circumstances. “The more people that know, the more it leaks... and then the enemy knows what it is,” Matalin said of details about other intelligence programs that were leaked to the media.
“Every time they get in trouble... they dredge up a Darth Vader story,” Matalin also said, making a reference to past comparisons between Cheney and the villain in the “Stars Wars’ movies.
"The president’s agenda is almost in shambles?" Really? He's going to get his SCOTUS nominee no problem, health care reform is a near-certainty, the stimulus has already been passed... Seriously, WTF is she talking about?
Like Cornyn, Matalin is trying to shore up the position that Republicans are never wrong. Is she saying that Panetta invented all of this? If so, why isn't Cheney out there denying everything? As it is, he isn't returning journalists' phone calls. It's pretty clear that whatever this secret scandal is about, it's real and it's bad.
These people will do anything to spin this away from the Bush administration. Somehow, we're supposed to believe that Obama's responsible for this... whatever it is. No argument is too stupid.
