For those of you concerned that impeaching George W. Bush will mean that we end up with President Dick, breathe a little easier.
Insight Magazine has reliable sources which say that Cheney is expected to retire within a year.
Senior GOP sources envision the retirement of Mr. Cheney in 2007, months after the congressional elections. The sources said Mr. Cheney would be persuaded to step down as he becomes an increasing political liability to President Bush. The sources reported a growing rift between the president and vice president as well as their staffs.
RedState.org theorizes that this is to help the President out politically in the last two years of his term. They point out, however, that
First, would such a manuever have any chance of achieving its (presumed) goal? Aren't second term off-year elections commonly thought of as the general time frame where pretty much any President inescapably enters lame-duck status?
Which is a good point. Why bother? How can this improve the Republicans' chance of keeping any seats, if this is after the midterm elections?
The only reason I can see for Bush allowing Cheney to resign is because Bush knows that any impeachment would also implicate Cheney. Both president and vice-president would be removed from office. The Speaker of the House would become President, and would choose his own vice-president. If Cheney is resigning, it's so Bush can select a vice-president who will succeed him in case an impeachment is successful.
Moriarty of Redstate, your typical hard-core conservative Republican, would like Gingrich to be selected.
However, my suspicion is that if Cheney is to resign in order to give the President some political capital, the nomination will go to a Republican that Democrats like, meaning probably Sen. McCain. In that event, I will be less pleased, but still satisfied since I think that McCain clearly stands the best chance of beating Hillary Clinton in 2008.
I doubt that Hillary will run in 2008. But Moriarty's right - of all the Republican candidates that could run, McCain's got the best chance. He's not totally reprehensible to the Democrats. Even better, he's one of the old-school Republicans, not a neo-con liberal Republican.
Strategists like Larry Sabato think that the Democrats will win back a slight majority in either the House or Senate.
Larry Sabato, political analyst at the University of Virginia, says Bush's problems in the midterms parallel those that faced the Republican party in the pivotal 1972 midterm elections after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace or the 1966 midterms when widespread voter dissatisfaction with Lyndon Johnson cost Democrats seats in both the House and Senate. "If the election were held next week, Democrats would probably take control of at least one house of Congress," Sabato says.