Conservative of the Year--the Man Who Wanted To Invade Buffalo

Human Events selected its Conservative of the Year--the one and only Dick Cheney. Editor Jed Babbin has a keen sense of humor and the choice usually has a large dose of intending to provoke liberal outrage. Last year, the choice was Sarah Palin, who galvanized conservatives for the Republican ticket when most conservatives thought John McCain was a RINO.

But let's take this seriously. When Dick Cheney was in the Senate he had a voting record right of Jesse Helms, the beacon for conservatives then. But is the Dick Cheney of today really a conservative? Let's take his advocacy through his aide-de-camp Richard Addington of the constitutional theory of a unified executive. Real conservative constitutional scholars like Bruce Fein, who has become more of a libertarian, thought such a doctrine was worthy of impeaching George W. Bush. It's a constitutional doctrine that is radical to the extreme--the President can basically do whatever he wants. It makes even King George look wussy.

Or how about abandoning the Geneva Conventions and embracing torture as American policy. Thewhistle-blowers on these Bush policies were all Reagan conservatives. To his credit William Howard Taft IV, with the proper conservative lineage, drafted memo after memo condeming the abandonment of the Geneva Conventions, which the United States helped draft, and attacked the Torture Memos of the Department of Justice. It is no small irony that when he was Governor of the Phillippines, former President Taft called waterboarding Philipino insurgents the "most disgraceful acts in our history". Abandoning Ronald Reagan's commitment of the United States to the Convention Against Torture doesn't seem very conservative. Ronald Reagan's Justice Department even prosecuted a Texas sheriff for waterboarding a prisoner.

What about Gitmo, a subject on which Dick Cheney is famous?Most of the materials in the reports of human rughts groups condemning practices at Gitmo were derived from military personnel who were self-proclaimed conservative Republicans. Even the chief prosecutor at Gitmo claimed torture had been committed and that cases against the detainees were jeopardized by these practices was a Reagan appointee to the Pentagon.

Suspending the fourth amendment of the Constitution--admittedly with Democratic consent--is not very conservative. And advocating the invasion of Buffalo with US troops during the Lackawanna terrorist plot doesn't sound very conservative. Dick Cheney did advocate this and was over-ruled by President Bush.

And what about over-riding the FISA courts. After all it was Reagan appointee to the bench, Judge Lambeth, who was available 24/7 to approve wire-tap requests from the Government. He was removed because he was too inconvenient and the NSA simply decided to tap all Americans without warrants. That doesn't seem so conservative.

Dick Cheney made his fortune as the head of Halliburton. Now we're getting somewhere. But wait up--his actual performance in real private sector-private sector deals were a disaster. He made the company real money by procuring government contracts. That's not so conservative.

Dick Cheney said, "As Ronald Reagan said, deficits don't matter." Here we can give him the benefit of the doubt as his administration left the United States in debt to the tune of $12 trillion according to the Office of the Treasury Report for 2008. Maybe not so conservative as he would like.

He sacrificed all his Halliburton bonuses and stock options when he took public office and donated them to charity. That's compassionate conservatism. But wait, the donation was to the Richard Bruce Cheney Vice Presidential Library. Maybe not so conservative.

He supported the creation of a whole new doctrine of "Pre-emptive Warfare", which abandoned America's traditional doctrine of deterrence. That's not conservative at all.

Dick Cheney never met a President whom he felt was strong enough. His days now are spent fighting bureaucratic fights he lost in 2004 when it dawned on President Bush that maybe his vice-president preferred living on the dark side all the time. But then again the Vice President wasn't really part of the executive--that's not very conservative.

If CPAC can be sponsored this year by the John Birch Society, then maybe it makes sense to declare Dick Cheney "Conservative of the Year". It is a good joke played by Human Events.