Cheney in 2012? God help us

Apparently some people actually think that Cheney would be a good GOP candidate for president in 2012.

At first, it seemed like a joke. Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto opined on Monday that -- if the 2012 election were to turn to national security -- "it's hard to think of a better candidate... than Richard B. Cheney."

But while his headline -- "Cheney for President" -- provoked guffaws in some quarters, several of the party's most well-regarded strategists and pollsters are actually taking the idea deadly seriously.

"The Republican Party needs to move forward and build on its past, not return to it," Alex Castellanos, a frequent CNN analyst and GOP messaging guru, told the Huffington Post via email. "But if the agenda turns to security, Obama is mired in a no-win mess in Afghanistan, and the Obama administration hasn't created a single job in four years after indebting the nation for generations, maybe Dick Cheney could run on a theme of 'Change'." . . .

Longtime pollster and GOP operative John McLaughlin also said he sees an opening for a Cheney candidacy premised on a hypothetical national security failure from the current White House.

A Cheney nomination "would be a serious consideration because he really has been a defender of policies that the majority of people now think are successful," McLaughlin told the Huffington Post. "Although right now a lot of people are focused on the economy, if there ever was some sort of foreign policy crisis people will look to Dick Cheney and say he had it right."

Yeah. I'm sure that people are pining for the days of the Bush administration. *roll eyes*