Dowd covers for Obama by attacking Cheney

Maureen Dowd's latest column attacks Cheney because Cheney dares to have the audacity to defend his actions while Vice-President. (hat tip Hot Air)

After a distracting and pointless comparison to Carter, Gore vs. a sitting president, we finally get to the crux of her unhinged Cheney harangue:

Well, then you’d have to say that, in effect, we’re prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation program that would provide us the information we need to protect America,” Doomsday Dick said.

Cheney has replaced Sarah Palin as Rogue Diva.

At first glance it appears that in Dowd's mind, Cheney is a drama queen because he is speaking his mind and not giving Obama the benefit of the doubt to the commander-in-chief. Just like Republicans said Gore and Carter shouldn't have done. Cheney's comments are from personal knowledge from being directly involved with the policy at hand along with being attacked now over that policy. Carter and Gore had no involvement or decision in the policies they criticized.

What was the point in bring it up? Dowd's real purpose is to begin the spin to counter the Bush-Cheney success:

No matter if or when terrorists attack here — and they’re on their own timetable, not a partisan red/blue state timetable — Cheney will be deemed the primary one who made America more vulnerable."

The fact is that in the 88 months after 9/11/2001 during Bush-Cheney, the US wasn't attacked. That didn't just somehow happen. Cheney was a part of that success and has said that the interrogation techniques played a role.

Dowd's push back is that Cheney, who is a private citizen, has a greater influence on the security of the US than the current President.

9/11/2001 - Carville: "I hope Bush fails".

Sept. 11, 2001:
Democratic strategist James Carville was hoping for President Bush to fail, telling a group of Washington reporters: "I certainly hope he doesn't succeed."

Carville was joined by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who seemed encouraged by a survey he had just completed that revealed public misgivings about the newly minted president.

"We rush into these focus groups with these doubts that people have about him, and I'm wanting them to turn against him," Greenberg admitted.

The pollster added with a chuckle of disbelief: "They don't want him to fail. I mean, they think it matters if the president of the United States fails."

Nov. 21, 2001:
Mr. Carville goes on to advise Democrats that in order to help "set up the congressional choice for next year" Democrats should characterize Mr. Bush's domestic policies as causing "economic damage, undermining social programs and geared towards big business." Apparently, in Mr. Carville's view, he is being sufficiently patriotic if he says, in essence: "Support our president even though he is a plutocratic parasitic insect that sucks the blood of the working people."

Nov. 30, 2001:
"The bottom line is, this is George Bush's recession," Rep. Nita Lowey, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chief, says in today's edition of USA Today.

A spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee called the comments of Lowey, D-N.Y., "despicable" and predicted the attack would backfire.

"I think it shows incredibly poor political judgment to attack a president with an 86 percent approval rating," said NRCC communications director Steve Schmidt.

"The economy was in a slowdown in the last days of the Clinton administration, and the slowdown was exacerbated by the Sept. 11 attacks."

Fox News Channel reported tonight that former Clinton strategist James Carville and others planned the negative campaign a month ago.

Nov. 30, 2001:The House Democratic campaign committee is preparing an advertisement for use in targeted House districts spotlighting Republican support for repeal of the alternative minimum tax on corporations, which Democratic lawmakers criticized as a boon for big business.

Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, who heads the Democratic campaign committee, said in an interview with USA Today published on Friday that last month's vote to repeal the tax was ``unpatriotic, inappropriate and wrong'' given rising unemployment.
Lowey said the ad would run in at least three House districts and labeled the recent economic downturn ``George Bush's recession.''
Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle questioned the Republican reaction to the ad campaign. ``There is a sensitivity right now in the administration about the Bush economy,'' Daschle said. ``We're in a recession.''