McCain's Sympathy For The Devil

Who also happens to be Militant Right Wing Movement Hero and "Highly Effective Fundraiser"

Ill: The Wizard of Whimsy http://home.comcast.net/~wizardofwhimsy/

Poor John McCain ~ he so desperately wants to be everything to everybody he runs the risk of being nothing to no one. In a nutshell, he's schitzophrenically all over the map, on no matter more than his troubled relationship with Dick Cheney, a man who famously tolerates no dissent and is inclined to view even the most innocuous gentlemanly conduct as puling weeny-weakling pansy stuff, and doesn't at all mind telling all the world about it in mocking tones.

Cheney is a hero to the rabid right-wingers? How very sad (and what peculiar standards for the word "hero" the deluded acolytes must harbor) ~ but a blogger for Politico who posits the idea of Cheney as Veep to McCain examines the hints that it still may be possible for Cheney to play a some sort of role in a McCain administration.

All indications are (in this particular iteration of McCain's multidimensonal public persona, anyway), that the chances are slim, given that Cheney harbors grudges regarding unflattering ~ even if true ~ things McCain has said about him and his staunch ally Donald Rumsfeld in the past, and although McCain privately "ran over to me and apologized" afterwards per Cheney.

Your Demon is beginning to wonder if there's a pattern in McCain's behavior whereby he first shoots his mouth off then scurries around trying to make amends when he realizes that he's only succeeded in inserting his foot ~it's a plausible explanation, but not very Presidential.

Anyway, the tibbits in the article that caught my eye:

"Cheney and McCain ...have had a rocky relationship. They have clashed publicly and privately during the Bush years on matters ranging from the treatment of terrorist detainees to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Most recently, they’ve been on opposite sides on the idea of a gas tax holiday and on a Cheney-backed energy bill. As a result, Cheney finds himself on the outside looking in, without a clear role to play in one of the most consequential campaigns in history and one where his signature foreign policy legacy is on the line.

"Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said the vice president had not yet campaigned for McCain and had not, to her knowledge, been asked. 'I don’t think the McCain people want Cheney anywhere near him,' said a former Cheney aide. Asked about what role Cheney would have in the campaign, McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker only said: 'John McCain will always treat the vice president with respect.' McCain sources note that there are no plans for Cheney and McCain to campaign together and most observers view such a prospect as highly unlikely, given Cheney’s low poll ratings and Democratic efforts to frame McCain as the third term of the Bush administration.

"Still, Cheney sympathizers believe the vice president can be helpful. "

Even though a "close" Cheney advisor recommended getting Cheney to talk McCain up on right wing talk radio as a means of energizing the demoralized conservative base (encouraging, what?), the article goes on:

"But even in a limited capacity, Cheney might make for an awkward surrogate given the prickly nature of his relationship with McCain. After McCain said last year that Rumsfeld, Cheney’s friend and mentor in the Ford administration, would 'go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history,' the vice president made plain his displeasure. 'I just fundamentally disagree with John,' Cheney told ABC News in an interview. 'John said some nasty things about me the other day and then, next time he saw me, ran over to me and apologized. Maybe he’ll apologize to Rumsfeld.”

"Cheney was alluding to an interview McCain gave to Politico in which he said President Bush 'listened too much to the vice president' and had been 'very badly served by both the vice president and, most of all, the secretary of defense.'

"Of course, McCain hasn’t always been critical of Cheney. In an interview he gave to the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes in 2006 for Hayes’ biography, Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President, McCain said: 'I will strongly assert to you that he has been of enormous help to this president of the United States.'

"Going further, McCain even told Hayes in comments heretofore unpublished that he’d consider Cheney for an administration post. Asked whether he’d be interested in Cheney had the vice president not already have served under Bush for two terms, McCain said: 'I don’t know if I would want him as vice president. He and I have the same strengths.'

"But to serve in other capacities? Hell, yeah.”

A star-crossed romance in the making?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11000.html