For all the noise about who will be the 2012 U.S. Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Haley Barbour, Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal, Linda Lingle, John Thune, Newt Gingrich, and recently, Joe Scarborough, Bob Dole, Gen. David Petraeus, Mitch  Daniels, Rick Santorum, and Bob Corker, the race has come down to two candidates, who are poster children for everything the GOP stands for. Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney.  Cheney represents the Great White Hope (although he’s not young) that Lynn Jenkins, a Republican congresswoman from Kansas, referred to when she told a group that the GOP is “struggling right now to find the Great White Hope.”  She added: “I suggest to any of you who are concerned about that, who are Republican, there are some great young Republican minds in Washington.”

Premiering as a play, before being made into a movie, “The Great White Hope” tells the life story of boxing champion Jack Johnson (Jack Jefferson). Focusing on a racist society, it explores how segregation and prejudice created the demand for a “Great White Hope” who would defeat Johnson. The tagline for the movie was “He could beat any White man in the world. He just couldn’t beat all of them.”

So Cheney, the GOP’s answer who apparently would fight tooth and nail as a believer in the Republican  Hypocritical Oath: “I believe ... the strength of our nation lies with the individual and that each person’s dignity, freedom, ability and responsibility must be honored ... free enterprise and encouraging individual initiative have brought this nation opportunity, economic growth and prosperity. ... the proper role of government is to provide for the people only those critical functions that cannot be performed by individuals or private organizations, and that the best government is that which governs least. ... the most effective, responsible and responsive government is government closest to the people. ...  Americans value and should preserve our national strength and pride while working to extend peace, freedom and human rights throughout the world.

According to historian Sean Wilentz, former President George W. Bush’s “presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.”

Cheney was his right-hand man for eight years. What do we remember him for? Shooting his friend while participating in a quail hunt and as being CEO of the much maligned Haliburton Corporation, 8th on the Fortune 500 list of companies with the most offshore tax havens; sold $63 million worth of oil products to Iran; held stakes in two firms that sold over $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq; and sold tools to Libya that could be used to trigger nuclear bombs. Haliburton was fined for defrauding the government; made to give back $6.3 million in kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor and admitted that it had paid $2.4 million in bribes to officials of Nigeria’s Federal Inland Revenue Service.

If Cheney is the GOP’s choice and somehow wins the election, may God help us all.



Lynn Jenkins  said what everyone knows: the GOP is looking for
the “Great White Hope.”