Cheneymania

Via Oliver Willis, Jonathan Chait senses a draft:

The Draft Cheney movement is burbling just below the surface. Fred Barnes suggested it earlier this month in the Weekly Standard. Tod Lindberg of the Washington Times and Lawrence Kudlow of National Review Online echoed Barnes in columns this week.

Cheneymania has reached critical mass.

Now, maybe it's Cheney '08 springing into action in the wake of the Social Security fiasco, or maybe it's the Gray Man Group hoping to count Dick in or out so they can set their financing priorities. Of course, it could just be three right-wing tools taking payola for column inches, a possibility which has to be considered anytime any of those guys opens his mouth. Chait believes that Cheney is at least not averse to taking the job, but then there's the little matter of his promising not to do so. Tis an insignificant hurdle if he decides he needs to jump it, but it could be costing him valuable time considering that the religious radicals are out there and prepared to swarm. Absent a nod from Bush a draft movement is his only way for a quick start. I've got no idea what Cheney's intentions are, but it sure is interesting what's popped up before the daffodils this year.

Feerless '08 Prediction of the Week: One of those crypto-Stepford Wife Republican CNN/MSNBC or network correspondents will, live, on-camera, and in the presence of the GOP nominee, go into full Devils of Loudon, speaking-in-tongues mode.