A vote for Republicans (in 2006) is a vote for Cheney

Salon caught Harry Reid at the YearlyKos bloggers’ convention. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/12/reid/print.html ($) I imagine some of his Republican colleagues will be less than pleased to see their names associated with utter spinelessness, but Republicans certainly have themselves to blame for the end of collegiality, and does anyone doubt that it’s true? Has there ever been such abject surrender by members of Congress to a Vice-President, for God's-sakes, in the history of our country? Bill Frist, Pat Roberts, and now Arlen Specter, the biggest chicken-shits, the biggest quitters, in the history of the United States Senate. Surrender-monkeys supreme.

We have our essential campaign message for 2006 staring us in the face: “People, it’s very simple. If you want Dick Cheney continuing to run the Congress for his oil buddies, then vote for Republicans. If you want a Congress that will have the guts to stand up to Cheney and start fighting for you, vote for the Democrats.

Here's what Reid had to say to Salon:

But I think we've come to learn that the intelligence community in America is run by one person -- one person -- and that's the vice president. [Sen. Pat] Roberts, who is the supposed chair of that committee -- I shouldn't say "supposed chair"; he is the chair -- he can't do anything without [Dick Cheney]. Let me give you an example. Jay Rockefeller had surgery, and it turned out a lot worse than we expected. It was spinal surgery, so he could not do his job.

He had to stay home. We had worked and struggled to have a three-member Democratic oversight committee to oversee NSA stuff. . . . Rockefeller can't be there, so I talk to [Senate Majority Leader Bill] Frist, and I say, "What we need to do is have somebody replace, at least on a temporary basis, and the fourth person in seniority is [Oregon Sen.] Ron Wyden." So Frist, he doesn't do anything. After a couple of days, he says, "Talk to Pat Roberts, talk to Pat Roberts." And a day or two later, Pat Roberts says, "The vice president doesn't want me to do that."

Everything is run through the vice president -- everything.

We saw some of that last week, when Arlen Specter went public about Cheney's efforts to block him from having the telephone companies testify on the NSA database program before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Yeah, everything.

What kind of pressure does Cheney exert on these guys?
I don't know. A phone call? I don't know what he does.

But what's the threat?
I guess he won't like them anymore. Maybe he'll use, like
he did with Leahy, the F-word. I don't know.

Whatever it is, they ultimately buckle under. Specter talks a good game, but --
It's not "ultimately." Specter is the only one who's given an ostensible reaction, negatively [to the NSA program]. But that didn't last. He caved in like soft cake, you know.

Do you think there will come a time when the Republicans in the Senate see Bush's approval ratings for what they are and really start to stand up to him?
I don't know. Cheney has such a grasp on them, I don't think it will happen until these guys leave.

Republicans in Congress shiver in their boots at the thought of Cheney’s wrath. This is one sad state of affairs considering he is the most despised political figure in memory -- probably even more than Nixon or McCarthy. So pick your favorite words to identify them: fraidy cats, cowards, gutless, jellyfish, lily-livered, milquetoast, mousey, mice, scaredy-cats, sissies, weaklings, yellow, yellow-bellied.