Elves and unicorns are real, too

October 18, 2005 2:32 PM

Cheney to step down in favor of Rice? Don't hold your breath. Play a round of Indictment Bingo if you need to pass the time sorting through all the stories flying around, but don't hold your breath.
posted by bitter-girl.com (34 comments total)

What I want to know is, should I hold my breath?

j/k
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:35 PM on October 18, 2005

Breath? Hell, I'm having enough trouble holding my lunch.
posted by eriko at 2:39 PM on October 18, 2005

If you do, count on Michelle Malkin to cash in on your untimely demise!
posted by bitter-girl.com at 2:40 PM on October 18, 2005

Would both houses of Congress accept Rice as VP?
posted by Rothko at 2:40 PM on October 18, 2005

Picture this: terrorists again strike in the U.S.

Where's Condi?

a. at her desk
b. at Manolo Blahnik
c. holding a press conference
d. I'm scared of all of the above. Hold me.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 2:41 PM on October 18, 2005

bah. Cheney's going to quit because of his health sometime next year, and Bush will make Giuliani his VP in a desperate PR ploy.
posted by horsemuth at 2:55 PM on October 18, 2005

It's not newsfilter if you include a non sequiteur?
posted by jepler at 3:21 PM on October 18, 2005

Happy Fitzmas Eve!
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:22 PM on October 18, 2005

If by quit you mean:
OD on viagra with a 15 year old call girl. Then lurch, red-faced and bloated, for his Secret Service panic button. Clutch his chest, stagger, then crash head first, stone dead, into his swimming pool full of money.
posted by tkchrist at 3:29 PM on October 18, 2005

That visual was really unpleasant, tkchrist. I don't think I can eat dinner now!

(Screw South Beach! To hell with Atkins! I'm on the Cheney Viagra Wonder Diet™!)
posted by bitter-girl.com at 3:36 PM on October 18, 2005

Clutch his chest, stagger, then crash head first, stone dead, into his swimming pool full of money.

...but not before howling "SMITHERS!!!" at the top of his voice.
posted by scody at 3:39 PM on October 18, 2005

Would both houses of Congress accept Rice as VP?

Well, I suppose the democrats could filibuster her, but why would they want to? Surely she's capable of doing the job if she can be secretary of state.

That said, replacing Cheney with Condi is a good movie politically. It gives the republicans a lock for the next presidential election (Although, I'm still not sure if she'd make it. Look at John McCain talking about Intelegent Design. These days. *sigh*).

I would not have been surprised if this happened in 2006 or 2007. Rice would probably make a better president then Bush for sure, but there is no way she'll be able to get the Rep. Nod without the VPcy.
posted by delmoi at 3:40 PM on October 18, 2005

and Iraqi blood
posted by matteo at 3:43 PM on October 18, 2005

and a new pair of Ferragamos.

(sorry, couldn't resist)
posted by bitter-girl.com at 3:44 PM on October 18, 2005

OK, again:

"Clutch his chest, stagger, howling "SMITHERS!!!" at the top of his voice. then crash head first, stone dead, into his swimming pool full of money and Iraqi blood"
posted by matteo at 3:44 PM on October 18, 2005

go f*ck yourself dick cheney - the worst of the worst.
posted by specialk420 at 3:45 PM on October 18, 2005

I'm trying not to get too excited about this, but my nipples are hard anyway.
posted by MegoSteve at 4:07 PM on October 18, 2005

I hate to inject a bit of realism into this thread, but there are several reasons why this is merely fantasy:

1. Congress would not let this happen. I'm not talking about any formal, Constitutional blocking. I mean that the Republican leaders in Congress would make it clear that if the administration wants their support for, well, anything, they won't do this. Why? Because there are a whole bunch of Congressional leaders - chief amongst them McCain and Frist - that want to run for President themselves, and they would of course block any attempt to put a strong candidate in the VP office and thus screw themselves.

2. The Bush family doesn't want Condi or Rudy in the White House in three years - they want Jeb. So for the same reasons as above, they wouldn't go for this.

3. Why would Cheney want to leave? Everyone acknowledges that he is the power behind the throne. After all, it's telling that the Secret Service protected HIM on 9/11, and allowed Bush to stay in a public classroom while the country was under attack, just as they did last year when the plane flew into White House airspace - Cheney was rushed to safety in the bunker while Bush continued riding his tricycle.

4. This isn't the first time these rumors have been around, and I promise it won't be the last. A year and a half ago, everyone "knew" that Cheney was going to step aside or be removed from the ticket in favor of Colin Powell, and for the other reasons mentioned above, it didn't happen.

5. Condi Rice isn't the ultimate black candidate everyone thinks she is. African-Americans don't just want any African-American elected to the Presidency - they want someone who actually represents their views and their beliefs and their problems, and a woman who has an oil tanker named after her hardly reprents the average American of any skin color, much less blacks.

6. Being Vice President isn't the automatic road to the White House that everyone likes to think it is. Before Bush I, no sitting VP had been elected in his own right to the Presidency in 100 years. And it hasn't happened since.
posted by robhuddles at 5:01 PM on October 18, 2005

I hate to inject a bit of realism into this thread, but there are several reasons why this is merely fantasy:

All logical reasons -- which means they can be tossed by the wayside. This is Bush we're talking about, after all.

The only real question: Does Bush think that feeding Cheney to the sharks would save his skin? If so, Cheney will go down in flames. If not, Cheney will survive.

Anything else misses the point. Bush reacts in a very predictable way -- he does anything he can to avoid taking the blame. The one time he had to stand up, you could smell the flop sweat over the damn TV. He's a bully and a coward, through and through, and if dumping Cheney, or even Rove, is what it will take to save his ass, off the back of the truck they go.

So, ask yourself this as you are unwrapping presents on Fitzmas Morn -- What Would Cowards Do?
posted by eriko at 5:51 PM on October 18, 2005

Its heartwarming to see that Fitzmas hasn't become overcommercialized yet.
posted by R. Mutt at 6:01 PM on October 18, 2005

Is this another holiday I can't participate in because I'm not a Christian? Why can't it be Fitzukah or Kwanfitza?

(On spell check, the checker seems to believe Fitzukah is really fistula and Kwanfitza is really kaftan.)
posted by sequential at 6:18 PM on October 18, 2005

You would have to ask my friends, but I predicted his resignation and her appointment at the last inaugural; it was only a matter of time. Mainly because the Republicans need the next front runner, so why not anoint one.

Didn't think of Rudy though, that's something to also consider...
posted by fluffycreature at 7:00 PM on October 18, 2005

I won't vote for Condi. She's damaged goods because of those she associates with. Those that I would vote for have transgressions themselves, but have distanced themselves from the current administration. Namely McCain or Powell. Both have made mistakes by following where they should have lead, but both are more trustworthy, and have a splinter of the real stuff it takes to get us out of the current mess. (that they helped get us into, that they will have to explain their ways out of).
posted by Balisong at 7:01 PM on October 18, 2005

I'd love to see Rice or Guliani as VP, not just because either would be an improvement over Cheney, but because it would speed the Republican civil war. But it won't happen. The social conservatives who seem to have so much pull with Bush hate Rice and they really hate Guliani, they would demand someone like Pat Roberts of Kansas. Who would be Cheney without the heart disease.
posted by LarryC at 8:08 PM on October 18, 2005

bah. Cheney's going to quit because of his health sometime next year, and Bush will make Giuliani his VP in a desperate PR ploy.

i totally agree with horsemuth. that way the republicans will have a leading candidate for prez in 2008. it couldn't get any worse than that!
posted by brandz at 8:13 PM on October 18, 2005

Both Cheney and Rice came out on the same day to announce that they would not run for president. Were Cheney to resign, he could take the role of republican candidate kingmaker. Rice, for her part, would become the darling of the republican candidates, not seeing her as competition.

Because Bush, by etiquette, has to refrain from endorsing a candidate until a primary winner is chosen, both the Cheney and Rice endorsements are pure gold. Rice, for her part, if she is popular or effective, could be offered the VPs job for the new president.

The biggest plus for the entire nation of a Rice VP is that the closet racists in both parties wouldn't be able to contain themselves, and would take off their masks, hopefully to be purged. I also suspect that, politics aside, Rice as VP would cause a serious and healthy re-evaluation among African-Americans as to about every aspect of their culture and attitudes.

World-wide, Rice has already caused a social stir by being both a woman and a dark-skinned African, both groups long seen as inferior in many cultures, and yet she dominates the most powerful generals in the world. And most of all, not by being the proxy of her husband or lover, but on her own.

Men who intensely fear women, and are patently misogenistic, filled with religious and cultural excuses for why women are inferior and must be kept down--forced to acknowledge her as not just an equal, but as a better. And she would also be visible to women, making them ask the hard questions as well.
posted by kablam at 8:25 PM on October 18, 2005

<possible scenario - check this -


Methinks the DNC dinos are going to push a HRC candidacy through, whether we progressive dems agree or not.

Q: How do you combat a white female candidate?

A: With a BLACK female candidate!
posted by stenseng at 8:35 PM on October 18, 2005

... Cheney's health is gonna get bad soon, I guess.
Condi's people are all tied to this mess, elevating her would cause an uproar for many, many reasons. Her dancing on the drowning black people might be a real issue or her being black and "single". As is her inability to make a decision. And the odds in which Bush would probably leave office before the end of his term if Cheney were forced out got ill or resigned.
Rice is an empty suit, and people keep wanting to push her, mainly because she's black and Republican. Promoting her would be like letting Donna Brazile run another campaign.
But given Bush's reliance on Cheney, even rumors of this sort are dangerous, because it means people are already plotting to shove him aside.
If Cheney is going, watch to see if McCain takes a meeting with Bush. ...
posted by amberglow at 8:42 PM on October 18, 2005

and he's made his money-his work is done:
An analysis released by a Democratic senator found that Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton stock options have risen 3,281 percent in the last year...

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) asserts that Cheney's options -- worth $241,498 a year ago -- are now valued at more than $8 million.
posted by amberglow at 8:50 PM on October 18, 2005

Ms. Rice's complete failure as national security advisor to do anything at all to prevent the September 11 attacks and her purjury in front of the September 11 Commission make her unsuitable for the presidency in my book. Incompetance and perjury are disqualifiers for me, sorry. (I'm not suggesting that she should have pre-emptively hunted down the hijackers or anything, but her saying that no one could have imagined that terrorists would use planes to fly into buildings was an incompetant assessment of a security threat.)

McCain lost my respect by sucking up to Bush during the 2004 campaign, after Bush's reprehensible smear campaign against McCain in 2000.

Powell should have stuck with his original "this is bullshit" assessment of his UN presentation and refused to read it, or resigned once it was shown there weren't any WMDs. Instead of crying to Barbara Walters about what kind of tree he'd like to be the speech being a painful blot on his record, he should publicly disclose what he knows about our going into a war that's cost us 1,981 people and the lives of at least 26,000 Iraqis.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:52 PM on October 18, 2005

One of the regular regulars on the John Bachelor show predicted that Cheney will resign.
posted by ParisParamus at 8:54 PM on October 18, 2005

Condi is a non-starter for presidential candidate. As ugly as it sounds, the Republicans simply can't afford to gamble that their base hates Hillary Clinton more than they hate the idea of a black woman as president.
posted by Chrischris at 8:56 PM on October 18, 2005

Bypass procedures don't last forever.
posted by clevershark at 9:06 PM on October 18, 2005

Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson are considering a civil suit against administration officials.
posted by homunculus at 9:13 PM on October 18, 2005