Ousting Cheney?

Republican gadabout Sally Quinn says in the WaPo that there is a growing GOP movement to try and oust Dick Cheney. Her claim is that Fred Thompson would be the replacement.

While I don't doubt that many GOP insiders would like to see Cheney shooting old men in retirement, I find it impossible to believe that Bush would ever let Cheney go.

Read the other, more important Cheney story in the Post today to get some idea of why this won't happen from the Bush side.

When the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003, for example, Bush was consumed with concern for the families of the seven dead astronauts. That left Cheney to make the first critical decisions about the future of manned spaceflight.

Frighteningly echoes the Sept. 11 scenario, doesn't it? A President frozen by the challenges of his office, an opportunity seized by VP Cheney to craft things his way.

The Post presents this level of Cheney involvement on almost every issue. Today's piece really is an ugly portrait of an incompetent, overmatched president who enjoys the trappings of office and allows his second to run the government as long the great secret of his incompetence is kept.

And that closely held secret of incompetence is the reason Bush will never let Cheney leave. He would have to trust someone else.

(By the way, what is the one major challenge/issue in which Cheney never apparently involved himself?

Katrina.)