As far as I can tell, this is an actual news story, not satire.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney will address members of the Republican National Committee gathering here in California this week for strategy sessions on how to broaden the GOP’s appeal with voters.
Right. Because if there’s one person who can help broaden the GOP’s appeal with voters, it’s the failed former vice president widely despised by the American mainstream.
This, of course, comes on the heels of news that Cheney offered national security advice to House Republicans, despite his disastrous record on national security.
What I’d hoped would happen in 2009 never actually occurred. There was never any meaningful effort — on the part of Republicans or the political world in general — to come to terms with the scope of the Bush/Cheney fiasco. On the contrary, despite the near-catastrophic results, many apparently came to see the Bush/Cheney team as just another in a long line of administrations.
Major news organizations hired Bush/Cheney aides as pundits to help the public better understand current events; voters elected members of the Bush/Cheney team to public office to help shape policy; and lawmakers turned to — and continue to rely on — the top figures from the Bush/Cheney White House, as if they have wisdom to offer.
Folks from the previous administration didn’t have the decency to just go into hiding, cognizant of the fact that they’d already done enough damage to the country. Instead, they decided to pretend their credibility remains intact, as if they hadn’t failed spectacularly when given an opportunity to govern.
So, when the RNC meets in California for strategy sessions on how to broaden the GOP’s appeal with voters, it apparently doesn’t cause widespread laughter when Dick Cheney is invited to deliver an address.
This didn’t happen after Hoover/Curtis left in 1932.
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