Fourthbranching Out

by digby

I think everyone’s been assuming that Cheney was out there defending the torture and reckless invasion regime in order to protect the administration’s legacy (and possibly avoid prosecution) because he really believes his policies kept the nation safe. There’s even been speculation that he’s been nobly trying to protect the little guys unlike the traitors of the Reagan administration who let them hang out to dry.

But it’s looking more and more like he’s some other agenda:

Cheney said he disagreed with President Bush’s decision to provide a short term loan to General Motors, which the former Vice President said was intended to keep GM solvent until then-President-elect Obama could take the reins.

“Well, some of us at the time wanted GM to go bankrupt, go to Chapter 11,” Cheney said in an interview with CNBC’s Larry Kudlow.

“The decision was made that, in the final analysis, since our administration was almost over and a brand-new team was about to take over, that the president wanted, in effect, not to take a step that wasn’t necessarily going to be followed by his successor,” Cheney said.

I can’t say that I’m surprised that he would be out there justifying the torture regime. It looks so bad, and he’s so closely associated with it, that anyone would want to publicly explain. But this is something different. It’s true that Cheney was the guy who said “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter — this is our due,” so his bona fides on the economic front are less than stellar. But nobody holds him personally responsible for the bail outs. And yet yet now he finds it necessary to tell everyone that he was against the GM bailout and basically throw Junior over the cliff?

If you didn’t know better you’d think this guy was running for office.

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