Dick Cheney 2012: Liz Cheney

Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, sat on Sunday’s Fox News Sunday panel. After the topic turned to President Obama's respectful bow before Japanese Emperor Akihito, Liz Cheney tried to make a case for her father, who deferred bowing to the Emperor in 2007, for a Presidential run in 2012.

LIZ CHENEY: You could also look at the comparison and think, Cheney 2012.

WALLACE: Really?! How far do you want to go with that?

KRISTOL: Let Liz make news. Cheney/Palin.

WALLACE: Or Palin/Cheney — don’t be sexist.

Of course, Dick Cheney would be 71 in 2012, and he already chose not to run in 2008 because of his admittedly fragile heart condition. McCain / Palin was already controversial because McCain was so old, and did you really want a person who didn't know Africa was a continent as President? Cheney / Palin would be the same thing. Palin / Cheney? Please. Watch it.

Dick Cheney in 2012? It Could Be

Former VP Dick Cheney expressed no interest in running for the Presidency in 2008, and speculation was that a great deal of it was because of his past health issues. He has a long history of cardiovascular disease. In 2012, he would be 70.

Despite this, on Monday, WSJ columnist James Taranto wrote an op-ed that if the 2012 election were to focus on national security, "it's hard to think of a better candidate--assuming, of course, that he could be persuaded to run--than Richard B. Cheney."

It's clear that the Bush Administration did some things that would be called inhumane, and against the Geneva Conventions, including torture. It's also relatively clear that Dick Cheney had a bigger part in that than one would have expected, as he turned the post of VP into something with some punch.

Some have called him "Darth Vader," in fact.

HuffPo did some polling of pundits, and conservatives aren't against it.

John McLaughlin said he sees an opening for a Cheney candidacy if there's a national security error from the Obama administration. Great, the GOP hoping for a terror attack. As I've said before, there's no way to absolutely prevent an attack in the future. It just can't be done; the country is too big and the borders too wide.

"Although right now a lot of people are focused on the economy, if there ever was some sort of foreign policy crisis people will look to Dick Cheney and say he had it right."

Craig Shirley, a longtime Republican strategist said:

"In 2009, there are few absurdities left in American politics. Anything is possible and the mere fact that Cheney's name is being floated accomplishes several things including striking fear in the heart of President Obama, especially in light of the crumbing American position in Afghanistan, which could become Obama's Vietnam.

"It also gives aid and comfort to a still battered Republican Party as he is the only GOP leader besides [Newt] Gingrich uncowed by the dominate liberal elites manning the batteries in the nation's capital. They are about the only two politicians on the right who are willing to make a fight of it."

Stephen Wayne, a political science professor at Georgetown University had a more pointed view of the issue:

"The Republican Party today consists of people who are conservative, religious, white and predominantly male. And, you know, if those are the only people who participate and you don't have a lot of other very conservative candidates it is conceivable Cheney could win the Republican nomination. But I don't think it is likely."

McCain: Torture Ineffective, Helped Terrorists Recruit

Just hours after former VP Dick Cheney defended the use of torture during an interview with Fox News Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), appearing on CBS' Face the Nation insisted that the use of torture on terrorism suspects violated international law, didn't work, and actually helped al Qaeda recruit additional members.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you-- do you agree with the vice president when he says this has kept the country safe all this time since this attack and it is because these interrogations worked and we found out information that helped us keep the country safe.

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan. I think that these interrogations once publicized helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq who told-- who told me that.

I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed and so-- and I believe that information, according to the FBI and others, could have been gained through other methods.

BOB SCHIEFFER: When you say an al Qaeda operative told you it helped them. What-- what do you mean?

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: I was in-- Senator Lindsey Graham and I were in-- in Camp Bucca, the twenty-thousand-prisoner camp. We met with a former high-ranking member of al Qaeda. I said, "How did you succeed so well in Iraq after the initial invasions?" He said two things. One, the chaos that existed after the initial invasion, there was no order of any kind. Two, he said, Abu Ghraib pictures allowed me and helped me to recruit thousands of young men to our cause. Now that's al Qaeda.

And the second thing about it is, if you inflict enough pain on anyone, they'll tell you anything that to make the pain stop. So you not only get, perhaps, right information but you also get a lot of wrong information.

But the damage that it did to America's image in the world is something we're still on the way to repairing. This is an ideological struggle as well as a-- as a physical one, so.

McCain did add that he felt opening an investigation, as Attorney General Eric Holder is doing, into the past misdeeds was the wrong approach, that, as President Barack Obama said, we should move forward. However, as McCain said, "Well, the attorney general has a unique position in the cabinet, obviously. He can't be told what to do by the President of the United States."

Just in case anyone wants to blame Obama, he can't stop it, and has made it clear in the past he would prefer not to have these hearings Holder is planning.

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