The debate-dotted Republican campaign among presidential candidates has been a weird mix of Tea Party pandering, show business preening, Bush dynasty dying and Barack Obama scapegoating. Then throw in some John Kasich frustration as the token adult pragmatic.
Makes you wonder which “party” identity–from anti-government avengers and non-politician outsiders to next-generation “visionaries”–will the electorate likely see behind the eventual nominee?
Well, it hardly helped the GOPster identity cause last week when former Vice President Dick Cheney gave the keynote address at the fund-raising gala that preceded the Sunshine Summit in Orlando. He’s neither an iconoclast vilifying everything Washington nor the personification of the party of the future. More like the avatar of a demographically-challenged Party in presidential freefall.
If anything, Cheney was the embodiment of national arrogance and remains an ongoing symbol of the international quagmire that resulted from the Bush Administration’s duplicitous rationale for invading Iraq in 2003. The consequences of which, we’ve been tragically reminded, continue to ripple horrifically across the globe a dozen years later.
And he’s who the Republicans of 2016 call on to rally the Party troops?