So, when Cheney steps down in 07, will Frist be the anointed succesor?

Maybe this one has been discussed ad nauseum. It just occurred to me after this immigration vote that Frist is still running for president.

Why be afraid when all you have to do is change vote counts from the safety of your office?

problems with the HMO? Did they vanish?

Cheney leaves for health problems or due to indictment this year, before the elections and Powell is placed in his spot. Then they work over * real good in the papers and he leaves to "spend more time with his family." Then we get the unity government because by that time, the 20 foot rise in the ocean will be 40-50 years out instead of the current 95-100 years; and we'll have the minority opinion from the academics in geophysics...a return to the hottest period ever in the history of the earth (and mass extinction, including us bots). They'll pick some moderate DINO as a symbol of unity. The two of them will screw things up but be more palatable...just before extinction, the aliens will arrive, not to save us but to say "We told you so morons!" But then again, I could be wrong;)

Think about it.

Right now they have a dipcrap president with a horrific approval rating.

Does it make more sense for them to:

A. Replace Cheney in the last year
B. Run a "Bush opposite" Republican team in '08

If they choose A, how much benefit will the replacement be with the way things are going right now?

Not much. They can't come in with a magic wand and turn everything around in the last year. They'll just wind up being tainted like the rest of them by the time the election rolls around.

So it makes NO SENSE.

Rove won't risk it, and Cheney's ego is too big to step aside.

Unless his ticker acts up again.

Guess that would McCain. But can he get past the religious reich in the primaries?

like they're more "progressive" than Dems . . .

If Cheney steps down in 07, then Bush will probably send in Condi, so that the Repukes can claim (aside from being against everything else he did) that they're still "The Party of Lincoln" by getting the first "African-American Vice President", which would then go to the default candidate in 08 - trying to be "The First African-American President" . . .

Not sure how that power struggle will turn out. Both have done nothing but suck up to Bush so I guess it will depend on who Rove likes.

It wouldn't make sense to run on Bush's record and being Vice President would make it necessary to defend the record. It will be hard to find a replacement for Cheney because historically the next V.P. in the Bush Adm. would be linked to it and I doubt there would be many takers at this point.

He will not be the chosen replacement.

The problem with McCain is, even after kissing so much bushbutt that the brown stains are now permanent, they don't like or trust him.
It will not be a senator nor a congressman. Probably will be governor. Jeb, perhaps?

on a good day.

he is unpopular in the Senate (especially in Pat Leahy's office), in the House (where insecure Rethugs grow increasingly more insecure about their re-election chances), at the CIA (many of whose true-blue loyalists believe Cheney and Rummy tried to impose their own intelligence-gathering aparatus while cherry-picking intel on Iraq, and then blaming the CIA for the failures), among the press corps (who know now that Cheney lies through his teeth at every turn of the road), and among the voters (who FINALLY are beginning to abandon the Bush administration's disastrous domestic and foreign policies.

A smart move by the GOP would be to ask Uncle Dick to take a hike. That's problematic, since the GOP doesn't make a lot of smart moves lately. Witness Jeff Sessions, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Jean Pirro, Jean Schmidt, Harriet Miers, etc.

I hope Cheney leaves by close of business today at the latest. Barring that, I'll settle for any time and hope that Frist is not his replacement. My guess is that Frist wouldn't take it anyway, because it would sink his presidential ship to be so unpresidential as a monkey's monkey.

I think its extremely unlikely that Cheney is going anywhere. But even if he did leave, there is no way his replacement is Frist or McCain or anyone else running for president. First, as other posters have mentioned, being associated with this administration isn't going to be a plus. Second, even if it was thought that being VP would be helpful in making a run for the presidency in 2008, replacing the VP requires a majority of the Senate to confirm and given the number of Democratic and repub senators that are interested in running, neither Frist nor McCain will be able command the support of a majority (neither is particularly popular in the Senate right now). Finally, no one running for the President can get the job because it would immediately raise questions about the fact that virtually all of his time in office would be spent campaigning and that would become an issue in and of itself.

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