Mitt Romney: Dick Cheney Is The Kind of Guy I’d Want as VP

Is Mitt Romney trying to associate himself with the Bush presidency? And if so, why?

Wednesday at an Arizona town hall meeting, a woman asked Mitt Romney if, should he win the Republican nomination, he would hire a Tea Partier to be his running mate.

Romney replied that his one criterion would be, “Is this a person who could be president of the United States?”

He then went on to supply a clear example of what that person would ideally be like. “I think it was last weekend, I was watching C-SPAN, and I saw Vice President Dick Cheney, and he was being asked questions about a whole host of issues — following 9/11, the affairs in various countries in the world,” Romney said. “And I listened to him speak and said whether you agree or disagree with him, this is a man of wisdom and judgment, and he could have been president of the United States. That’s the kind of person I’d like to have — a person of wisdom and judgment.”

Cheney has voiced appreciation for the Tea Party movement, telling Larry Kudlow in August, “I don’t think we would have gotten as far as we have without them sort of holding the feet to the fire of members of Congress.” But he’s not a Tea Partier himself.

Rather, Cheney will always be remembered the man behind the curtain of the Bush Presidency. His name will conjure the Iraq war, Abu Ghraib, the nickname “Darth Vader,” 9/11, the time he accidentally shot someone in the face, and the other events surrounding those eight years.

In the months approaching the Republican National Convention is Romney trying to associate himself with George W.? At the very least, he seems to be trying to distance himself from opponents Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, who are associated with the Tea Party and have earned criticism for being too extreme.

At the same town meeting Romney took a stab at Rick Perry for commenting that “Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.”

“Social Security has worked for 75 years pretty darn well,” he said. “You guys have not taken advantage of Social Security; you contributed to it. It’s a savings plan, a pension plan. There are no bad guys in Social Security, so I don’t call it a Ponzi scheme.”

It seems possible that in the last three years the Republican Party has pulled so far right that Romney, the moderate candidate, is aligning himself with the Bush years to seem sane.

It may seem strange, but the elderly crowd at Sun Lakes retirement community in Arizona appeared to be lapping it up.