George McGovern Lectures Dick Cheney on Fiscal Policy Etc.
The Democratic nominee for President in 1972 has some stern words for the current Vice President:
Cheney said that today’s Democrats have adopted my platform from the 1972 presidential race and that, in doing so, they will raise taxes. But my platform offered a balanced budget. I proposed nothing new without a carefully defined way of paying for it. By contrast, Cheney and his team have run the national debt to an all-time high.
True but I suspect what George McGovern said about the Iraq War will capture most of the headlines. Enjoy!
Update: Cheney now attacks Senator Reid:
WASHINGTON (AP) – Vice President Dick Cheney accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday of pursuing a defeatest strategy in Iraq to win votes in the next election – a charge Reid said did not warrant a response. The two sparred hours after President Bush said he will veto the latest war spending bill taking shape in Congress, which includes a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq. Cheney, after attending the weekly Republican policy lunch on Capitol Hill, lashed out at Reid. “Some Democratic leaders seem to believe that blind opposition to the new strategy in Iraq is good politics,” Cheney said. “Sen. Reid himself has said that the war in Iraq will bring his party more seats in the next election. “It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage,” Cheney said. Reid, D-Nevada, dismissed Cheney’s remarks later to reporters, but not before getting in his own dig at the vice president. “I’m not going to get into a name calling match with the administration’s chief attack dog,” Reid said.
What new strategy? But the Vice President definitely understands how war can be good politics. Winning the 2002 and 2004 elections seemed to have been the real goal behind their disastrous decision to start this stupid war. AND they paid for this war – with a tax cut! Pathetic!
Update II: Peter Baker covered the remarks from Dick Cheney that riled up George McGovern:
Vice President Dick Cheney accused congressional Democrats today of reviving the “far-left platform” of George McGovern from the 1970s, an agenda that he said would raise taxes, declare surrender in an overseas war and leave the United States exposed to new dangers. In a sharp-edged speech, Cheney escalated the Bush administration attack on Congress for passing war spending legislation that would mandate withdrawing at least some U.S. troops from Iraq. He raised the specter of the end of the Vietnam era, when McGovern, then a Democratic senator from South Dakota, ran for president on a peace platform and lost the 1972 election in a landslide to President Nixon.
I guess Dick Cheney forgets that Nixon pulled us out of Vietnam soon after winning re-election. Too bad George W. Bush did not have the same wisdom in 2005. But check this dishonesty from dead-eye Dick:
Cheney asserted that Democrats want to impose “the largest tax increase in American history” and have already “earned a place in the big-spending hall of fame.”
Oh golly gee – and I thought Dennis Hastert had been Speaker of the House for the first six years of the Bush Administration!