My Gosh! Has it been that long since rumors were flying about Cheney stepping down and Condoleezza Rice stepping "up"?

It seems like more than a year since I was insisting to my brother, Richard from Connecticut, that it was inevitable that Dick Cheney would step down (for "health reasons") and that Condoleezza Rice would fill his shoes as Vice President. Richard's exact words were, "You're crazy!"

Well, that was then and now is now.

Since those conversations with Richard in early and mid-summer of 2005, the Scooter Libby (Cheney's Chief of Staff) indictment was handed down and, of course, we all remember the rumors that were flying about Washington (DC) towards the end of 2005.

Since then, of course, other events have taken place such as Bush's poll ratings and Cheney's even worse poll ratings (see the Polling Reports website for both) -- not all as a result of his shooting a lawyer buddy in the face while murdering helpless pheasants who were bred in cages.

Since then, the Occupation (not "War") in Iraq has gone downhill and Mr. Bush is probably looking at Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz as his chief architects of the "strategy" that has taken us from his moment of glory when he addressed us all from aboard the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln ("Mission Accomplished") ... until today.

Besides, he probably sees it as God's will that he choose his own successor, and what better way to accomplish that trick than to set Condi up for that job -- despite her protestations to the contrary. Thou protesteth too much, sweet Condi, and just think: Wouldn't that just get the Democrat's goat really up if the GOP were to have the first woman, first black and first single Vice President in history -- with a shot at the same for President in 2008? The imagery is almost too good to pass up.



I'm sure it would bring a smile to both GWB's and Condi's faces to see the wind in Hillary's sails go the way of the glaciers I saw melting in An Inconvenient Truth yesterday. Mind you, Hillary has been one of my heroes since watching her on TV taking on the medical and insurance vultures back in 1993-94. But Mr. Bush and Condi (who are so close that she called him "my husba-- uh ... President" once -- accidentally) must surely think thoughts like those that enter my own diseased mind periodically.

And wasn't it only last Fall that Dick Morris (my brother, Richard from Connecticut, regards him as a brilliant political strategist) wrote a book entitled, Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race? That's the book wherein he and his co-author (Eileen McGann) went so far as to write that Condi is the only Republican who can (1) win the GOP nomination, (2) beat Hillary, and thus, (3) hold onto the White House and maintain a conservative Supreme Court for the Republicans.

Yeh, I know, Al Gore might just be the hottest thing going since pepperoni pizza by 2008, but then, he might really want to put the environment and his war on Global Warming first for some time -- at least for another 4 - 8 years. As Tipper Gore said last week, "he's only 58 years old!"

And Cheney is as expendable as Ken Lay, Tom DeLay and Scooter Libby, at the very least! And if he's indicted over the Valerie Plame affair ... well, he wouldn't have to cite his weak heart as an excuse to step down.

Whatcha think?