The New York State Republican Party is trouble, at its "lowest ebb in 70 years", said one of them to the Sun yesterday.
As Vice President Cheney arrives in the city today to address the New York Republican State Committee at its annual dinner, he will find a party in worse shape than one of his hunting buddies. The state's Republican Party, once a national powerhouse that yielded presidential nominees such as Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Dewey, is struggling through a seemingly continuous stretch of setbacks, embarrassments, and defeats, leaving Republican elected officials an endangered species throughout the state and party stalwarts divided over how to spur a recovery.
You could say that. They've lost two members of their congressional delegation to retirement and a third to a brilliantly spectacular flameout. They just lost a state Senate seat they'd held since the 19th century. They can't recruit for crap, either at the federal level or closer to home (Um, Barbara Donno? Frank Powers?) They've got no bench and the old farts in the state Senate ain't getting any younger. (Senator Trunzo, I'm looking at you...)
Into this increasingly dismal situation strolls Mr. Sunshine himself, President Dick Cheney who "headlined" the state GOP's big wing ding dinner in Manhattan last night. These weary troops needed some morale boostin' and Darth Cheney was just the man to give it to them.
At a Midtown hotel ballroom on Thursday, Vice President Dick Cheney declared that the United States was "succeeding brilliantly" in Iraq and assailed Democrats on taxes, gas prices, and national security.
As the keynote speaker at the annual dinner of the New York State Republican Party at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, Mr. Cheney predicted victory in November for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona. He also criticized Democrats in Congress for refusing to extend President Bush's tax cuts.
"Succeeding brilliantly?" Does he even believe this garbage anymore? Better yet, do the geezers in the ballroom believe this nonsense anymore?
Cheney wasn't the only one spewing false optimism in the hall last night either. Rep. Pete "Baghdad is just like Manhattan" King was there to predict that his party would pick up seats in the New York state Senate this fall, even though he told the Sun a rather different story yesterday:
"Right now we're in tough shape," a Republican congressman who represents Long Island, Peter King, said yesterday in an interview. "During the last decade we didn't build up a farm system and we didn't strengthen organizations and try to keep them alive. I think we just stagnated along the way."
All this happened while across town the Staten Island GOP, at least the ones who don't get invites to the big ol' Cheneyfest in Manhattan, finally found someone willing to run, a "dark horse" candidate (uh-huh), for the seat being vacated by the man with two families.
And if this wasn't weird enough, as if all these old men staring into the abyss while telling each other lies and and cheering on a certified war criminal as he told lies to them, as if this scene of greasy napkins, cufflinks and whistling past the graveyard of impending doom wasn't weird enough, or sufficiently perverse, the priest spoke and boasted of giving the "most partisan invocation ever" to great applause. Then he proceeded to enlist God's help in smiting Barack Obama. Or something.
Of course the chronology is all backward, but this is the order in which the relevant component's of the story of last night's surreal event came to me and, as they piled up, the scene just seemed creepier and creepier.
