WASHINGTON — Dick Cheney made clear Sunday he would rather follow firebrand broadcaster Rush Limbaugh than former Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell into a political battle over the future of the Republican Party.
Cheney embraced efforts to expand the party, led by former Govs. Jeb Bush of Florida and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and the House’s No. 2 Republican, Eric Cantor of Virginia, but the former vice president appeared to write one-time colleague Powell out of the GOP.
Asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” about recent verbal broadsides between Limbaugh and Powell, Cheney said, “If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I’d go with Rush Limbaugh. My take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican.”
Powell, secretary of state under President George W. Bush and Joint Chiefs chairman under President George H.W. Bush, endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president last year.
Cheney said, “I assumed that that is some indication of his loyalty and his interests.”
Under the younger Bush, Powell initially backed action against Iraq and delivered a U.N. speech laying out the U.S. case. But Powell and Cheney increasingly parted ways over the Bush administration’s policies on the war and terrorism, with Cheney usually prevailing. Powell left the administration after Bush’s first term.
Powell has argued the Republican Party needs to move toward the center and reach out to black, Hispanic and Asian communities, but instead has shrunk because it hasn’t changed with the country in the face of economic distress.
“The suggestion our Democratic friends always make is somehow if you Republicans were just more like Democrats, you’d win elections,” Cheney said. “Well, I don’t buy that. We win elections when we have good, solid, conservative principles to run upon.”
Cheney also said that transferring terrorist suspects from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States would be a bad idea that would enlarge their legal rights.
He also reiterated his belief the U.S. has become more vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack since the Obama administration renounced harsh interrogation tactics such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning, that Cheney said provided good intelligence.
