Cheney And Reaction To Him

The VEEP's speech yesterday promising to be unrelenting in showing the hypocrisy of Dems who are suddenly pretending they didn't believe the same pre-war intelligence Bush believed has them buzzing. For good reason. Here's Cheney's conclusion:

The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone – but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history.

We're going to continue throwing their own words back at them. And far more important, we're going to continue sending a consistent message to the men and women who are fighting the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other fronts.

We can never say enough how much we appreciate them, and how proud they make us. They and their families can be certain: That this cause is right … and the performance of our military has been brave and honorable … and this nation will stand behind our fighting forces with pride and without wavering until the day of victory."

Over at Talking Points, the response proves that Roveanoia is back in full swing on the Left:

How do you go after a decorated war veteran running against a quasi-draft-dodger? Hit him hard for cowardice and disloyalty to country. ...

You can see pretty clearly that Karl Rove is back in the saddle because what we're seeing now is straight from the Karl Rove play book. You throw them off balance by charging directly into their line of fire.

If you're a leftyblogger, how do you defend the hypocrisy of the Left? Ignore it and point a finger at Rove. Rove is a handy foil to those who have to defend the likes of John Kerry, but then the weapons at their disposal are pretty weak, sort of like the wood splinters that got Kerry one of his Purple Hearts.

Over at Mahablog (Bizzaro Betsy, to Superman fans), it's all the Big Lie:

Oh, the Big Lie strategy will work on the bitter-enders; the hard-core 37 percent who still believe, after all that’s happened, that Bush is doing a good job. These people would believe in the Tooth Fairy if Bush made her part of his attack on the Dems. But now a solid majority — 57 percent last I checked — of American adults believe that Bush deceived them into going to war.

Do defend this position, she points to a Knight-Ridder analysis that will give fodder to the defenders of waffling politicians. But the analysis splits hairs. For example, it quotes Bush saying more than 100 members of Congress had "the same intelligence" materials he had. Knight Ridder calls it a lie because the Prez gets a specialized daily briefing based on that intelligence.

Is that a big enough diff to call it a lie?

Mahablog is sitting too comfy on her stats. The tapes of Dems supporting the war are clear and irrefutable. They are not designed to build support for the war as much as to knock down the critics a rung or two, taking the wind out of their voice.

That may be Rovian, but the more important point is that the Dems are mad they were caught on tape, while there simply are no similar tapes to support their false claims; there are no tapes of Bush, Cheney and Rove saying, "Let's distort the intelligence."