Republicans' Cheney Conundrum
A CBS/New York Times poll finds that just 19% of Americans view Cheney favorably while 42% said they have an unfavorable view. The rest were undecided.
The poll results predictably broke sharply along partisan lines. Around 50% of Republicans have a favorable view of Cheney while on the flip side, 61% of Democrats said they held an unfavorable view.
If the numbers suggest something about the national mood as President Barack Obama nears his 100th day in office, Cheney's not buying it. In fact, he has been a frequent critic of the administration's domestic and national security policies-most recently. Unlike previous out-of-office vice presidents early in their retirements, Cheney has relished his extended moment in the political spotlight. In March, he told CNN that Obama's politics "raise the risk" of a U.S. terror attack.
More recently, he stepped up his criticisms of the Obama administration during an interview with Fox television's Sean Hannity. Among other things, Cheney said that:
"If you sit down and you look at the policies, and analyze where this administration's going and what they seem to be dedicated to trying to achieve, I think a lot of Americans, myself included, certainly, have major questions about that, or major views that don't think those are the proper courses of action that we ought to be following. And I think we need to speak out on that."
With former President George W. Bush still keeping a low profile, Cheney increasingly become identified as the face of Republican opposition to the Obama administrations. The irony is that some Republicans, worried about the prospect of Cheney defining the party image, are publicly distancing themselves from the person now regarded as the most powerful United States Vice President ever. So it is that Rep. Mark Kirk (R) told the online political Web site, The Hill, that Cheney should "follow the tradition of the Founding Fathers" and tend his legacy by writing his memoir.
In the same piece, another unidentified House Republican lawmaker said that Cheney's outspokenness did "House Republicans no favors." The lawmaker added, "I could never understand him anyway."
John McCain's daughter, Meghan, who co-hosted ABC's The View last week, was even blunter as she said the Republican Party needed "new energy and new blood."
"It's very unprecedented for someone like Karl Rove or Dick Cheney to be criticizing the President," she said. "My big criticism is just, you know, you had your eight years, go away."