alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

June 26, 2007

Conspiracy Theory of the Day

by AltHippo @ 4:01 pm. Filed under cheney

Picture Dick Cheney sitting in a diner somewhere in NJ. Lynne Cheney walks in giggling, a well-thumbed copy of “Sister” under her arm. Liz Cheney enters, her mind in a whirl, caught between two worlds: foreign policy advisor to the McCain campaign, and her secret desire to be Rupert Murdoch’s dominatrix. Mary Cheney enters last, her newborn child she holds in one arm. The other she uses randomly to punch out customers in the diner.

They sit. Dick thumbs through entries on the vintage jukebox. He pauses at “1812 Overture. -A. Tchaikovsky.” A popular hit when he and Lynne began dating. Liz asks for onion rings. Dick has already ordered for the table, with extra DDT, just the way she likes them.

Then everything goes to black.

That’s my version of the story. Sally Quinn has a slightly less oblique version:

Cheney is scheduled this summer for surgery to replace his pacemaker, which needs new batteries. So if the president is willing, and Republicans are able, they have a convenient reason to replace him: doctor’s orders. And I’m sure the the vice president would also like to spend more time with his ever-expanding family.

The idea being that Cheney gets replaced by Fred Thompson, the country loves Republicans again, and everyone lives happily after.

I don’t really know that Cheney would go for something like that. I think Bush would, however. Like all presidents, he’s got to be thinking of his legacy. Right now, that legacy is to be the dumbest, lamest, most imcompetant, most partisan, most hated president in the history of the US. Add to that, the rest of the world likes him even less. Except for maybe Albania.

So, that’s something Bush would at least consider.

More: I was just reading Dan Froomkin’s White House Watch live on-line. Regarding the Washington Post series on Cheney, this is a pretty darned good question:

St. Catharines, Ontario: Hi Dan. The Cheney piece in the Post starts off with “Cheney is not, by nearly every inside account, the shadow president of popular lore,” then extensively details how nothing the president sees has gone unfiltered by the vice president. Is the possibility of “Dubya” being merely a figurehead so frightful that the mainstream media — and perhaps the American public — can’t bring themselves to say it?

Dan Froomkin: I can’t quite explain that. It was one of the few assertions in the series that was not supported by ample evidence.

And while I’m not saying that it’s abundantly clear from reading the series that Bush is just a figurehead, it’s certainly a reasonable interpretation, and deserves to be addressed head on.

Although the series begins by asserting that Cheney is not the shadow president of lore, the bulk of what’s exposed indicates just the opposite. Maybe this is journalist humor (JoHu)?

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3 Responses to “Conspiracy Theory of the Day”

  1. Mr. Anthrope Says:
    June 26th, 2007 at 5:50 pm

    If Dick doesn’t want it to happen, it ain’t gonna happen. Otherwise, it’s a good theory.

  2. KCinDC Says:
    June 27th, 2007 at 2:08 pm

    The problem with predicting is that dumb and incompetent (and probably hated) in this case weigh on the opposite side of partisan (not sure which decision wins on the lame scale). Actually I’m not sure that getting rid of Cheney would even be partisan in the Bushite sense, which doesn’t have anything to do with necessarily helping any Republicans other than Bush himself.

    Cheney wouldn’t have been able to do all he has without some hold on Bush, whether it’s based on blackmail or psychological dependency or something else, so I’m not betting against him. Of course, if Cheney has the goods on Thompson and thinks he can control him as well, that’s a different story.

  3. AltHippo Says:
    June 27th, 2007 at 2:32 pm

    “Of course, if Cheney has the goods on Thompson and thinks he can control him as well, that’s a different story.”

    I know there’s a theory floating around that Cheney could control Thompson through the proxy of Liz, his daughter, who apparently is advising the Thompson campaign (I had thought it was the McCain campaign, which I suggested in the vignette) above.

    That seems hard to imagine. At the same time it makes me wonder what hold Cheney has on Bush. I had just assumed it was a matter of Bush being lazy and incompetent. Maybe there’s more than that.

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