Plotting the coup

The Democrats were pretty angry back in 1972 when their boy George McGovern couldn’t even score a yawn at the polls. I remember my hippie friends in those days had longer faces than John Kerry because their idealistic dreams of a socialist president had crashed down on their pointy heads and they’d suddenly had to get back to reality. It pretty much ended the Peace and Love generation – they cut their hair, got jobs and conformed to the “establishment”.

So, to prove they still had teeth, the Congressional Democrats tried to stage a coup. The Watergate burglary gave them their ammunition – that and Spiro Agnew’s resignation. President Nixon then had to name a Vice President – which the Senate had to approve. John Conyers and some others tried to convince the Senate to delay their advice and consent hearings for Gerald Ford so that when they forced their impeachment of Nixon, there’d be no Republicans to take over the reins of government – Speaker of the House Democrat Carl Bert Albert would be the de facto president – completely overturning the 1972 election. Of course, in those days, even Democrats cared more about the country than they did politics and the coup never took place.

Well, here we are again. The Washington Post ran a series of articles and photos this weekend about the Devil Incarnate (otherwise known as Dick Cheney) and now, they’ve sent their tiny-brained columnist morons out in force, drooling and licking their curled lips in anticipation, to advocate for Cheney’s dismissal. 

Sally Quinn, wife of Bill Bradlee, the editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate years, insists there’s a plot afoot by Republicans to replace Cheney – even though she names no sources, quotes no Republicans, or claims no special knowledge;

Removing a sitting vice president is not easy, but this may be the moment. I remember Barry Goldwater sitting in my parents’ living room in 1973, in the last days of Watergate, debating whether to lead a group of senior Republicans to the White House to tell President Nixon he had to go. His hesitation was that he felt loyalty to the president and the party. But in the end he felt a greater loyalty to his country, and he went to the White House.

Today, another group of party elders, led by Sen. John Warner of Virginia, could well do the same. They could act out of concern for our country’s plummeting reputation throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East.

For such a plan to work, however, they would need a ready replacement. Until recently, there hasn’t been an acceptable alternative to Cheney — nor has there been a persuasive argument to convince President Bush to make a change. Now there is.

Oh, yeah? Says who? Just because Barry Goldwater came to your house once before Watergate, Sally, that doesn’t make you the guardian of all Republican knowledge. I get the feeling she’s just tossing this out there to give Republicans an idea. Why? Well, my favorite turd among the WaPo’s idiots Eugene Robinson has his wettened lips up to the koolaid glass, to tell us why we should dump Cheney;

I’m often asked why, given my lower-than-low opinion of this administration, I don’t at least raise the subject of whether George W. Bush should be impeached. I answer with three scary words that tend to end the discussion: President Dick Cheney.

Then again, Cheney would probably think of moving into the Oval Office as a demotion. The president, at least, has some accountability to public opinion — if he’s going to defy it, he has to offer some explanation. The president has to hold an occasional news conference, tolerate meetings with his opponents on Capitol Hill and endure lectures from world leaders who question his policies. Cheney can just blow it all off.

Yeah, scary-assed Cheney who’s not accountable to the public – except that he’s been elected twice to his office by voters, just like the President, just like Al Gore. Robinson is a token on the editorial board – he can’t have been hired for his intellect. I swear he cuts and pastes his “opinions” from Democratic Underground posts.

More red meat for the nutroots – once we get Cheney fired, we can impeach the President. For what, numbskull? What charges? For paying attention to the same intelligence on Iraq that Democrats used as justification for Operation Desert Fox?

At least Richard Cohen (he of Wasted Lives fame) shows a little bit of common sense today, for a change. He insists that if Democrats don’t come up with a coherent stategy for the war (not necessarily ending it, but actually fighting it) they’re going to end up getting smoked at the polls in ’08;

The polls tell you that with George Bush’s approval ratings abysmally low; with the war in Iraq becoming increasingly unpopular; with the GOP lacking a dominant candidate; and with the party divided over immigration, social issues and even religion ( Mitt Romney’s Mormonism), the next president is bound to be a Democrat. History begs to differ.

The history I have in mind is 1972. By the end of that year, 56,844 Americans had been killed in Vietnam, a war that almost no one thought could still be won and that no one could quite figure out how to end. Nevertheless, the winner in that year’s presidential election was Richard M. Nixon. He won 49 of 50 states — and the war, of course, went on. Just as it is hard to understand how the British ousted Winston Churchill after he had led them to victory in Europe in World War II, so it may be hard now to appreciate how Nixon won such a landslide while presiding over such a dismal war. In the first place, he was the incumbent, with all its advantages and with enormous amounts of money at his disposal. In the second place, back then the Vietnam War was not as unpopular as you might think — or, for that matter, as the Iraq war is now. In 1972, almost 60 percent of Americans approved of the way Nixon was handling the war.

Cohen goes on to point out that Democrats thought, in 1972, that the election was in the bag (probably because of the echo-chamber where the Left lives) because they hang their hats on polls. Cohen warns that the netroots could lose the election for the Democrats;

Will history trump the polls? It will if, as in the past, the Democratic Party so wounds itself fighting the war against the war, it nominates a candidate beloved by a minority but mistrusted by a majority. It has happened before.

And he’s probably right – Americans don’t stand with the anti-war Left like the candidates stand with them. You don’t see Republicans candidates running to get to the Left (or Right, whichever) of Ron Paul despite the massive poll fraud committed by Ron Paulists on the internet. Yet, the Democrats think that internet support for their anti-war agenda (whatever that is) is real.

We’ll see.

Category: Historical, Politics, Society, Terror War