David Broder, Dean of the Washtingon Press Corps ™, is not the blogosphere's favorite Washington pundit. This is because he is not only a centrist, but a particular kind of centrist. He is not what Lord Macaulay termed a "trimmer" so much as a "splitter"; his form of centrism is to take the spectrum of political views and chop it down the center with an ax.
This isn't the most enlightening form of political philosophy, but as a bellwether it is worth watching.
Today, it seems the Broder ax fell squarely on Dick Cheney
To make a long story short, Broder has concluded that elder statesman position Cheney plays on the Bush team is a little too liberating for a man of Cheney's character:
Where I thought, mistakenly, that it would be a great advantage to Bush to have a White House partner without political succession in mind, it has turned out to be altogether too liberating an environment for a political entrepreneur of surpassing skill operating under an exceptional cloak of secrecy.
While this has been painfully obvious to some of us since the summer of 2001, what's important about Broder saying it is that is that means he no longer sees this as a partisan opinion. Unless Broder is uncharacteristically going out on a limb, it is probably safe for Republicans of centrist pretensions to start agreeing that Dick Cheney is bad for the country.
This may be the opening of a window of opportunity between Cheney losing Republican support, and the administration letting him go (if that's at all possible). Let's hope his ego makes him hang on for a long time.
I'm still not happy with HR333. It has two legs: Iran and Iraq. The Iran leg, evil though Cheney's role may be, is uselessly weak. The Iraq leg is shaky. Criminality there clearly is, but it doesn't defeat the "stupidity defense" or the "black is white" defense or the "that's what you say" defense. To convict, you need to convict beyond a reasonable political doubt, not reasonable logical doubt.
What the indictment needs is a stench of evil that even Republicans partisans can't ignore. Cheney's role in torture would be a good start. Mishandling classified information and misuse of the classification process is good too. Obstruction of justice -- it would be criminal to leave that out.
It'll be interesting to see whether Republican senators start to distance themselves from Cheney over the next few days. If so, it's time to throw the book at him -- the entire book -- before he slips out the back way.
I wrote in response to one of the interminable stream of "impeach now" diaries that it was important to put some blood in the water soon; to pick off a vulnerable big fish and so make the whole school nervous. Well, it looks like blood in the water now.