A failed vice president visits the Keystone State and says just about what we’d expect him to say:

“We’ve come to a strong finish. We are confident we will leave our jobs in good hands and history will show that George W. Bush has left us more prosperous and secure as President of these United States.”

Cheney and his ilk are fond of invoking history, because they read the same polls you do, and realize that the country has come to detest them. Once again - peace and prosperity, as if we have either. But Cheney seems to think we do. Which, when you come right down to it, is a snapshot of the entire problem.

That he would be the big draw at a Pennsylvania fund-raiser shows how hidebound the Pennsylvania Republican Party itself is - didn’t get the memo that voters so dislike conservatives of Cheney’s stripe that there’s not a single one left in the presidential race.

It is, quite frankly, the dictionary definition of delusion:

They really think that there is nothing wrong with their ideas, their methods, or their scorn for their own voter base. Even after the 2006 “thumping” they took in Congress, they don’t see it. Rather than take a step back and consider that McCain may actually be closer to the base in terms of his policy preferences (they can, after all, always tell themselves these primaries were about “electability”, not policy), they intend to soldier on with their losing agenda.

Let them; it’s the quickest path to irrelevance.

But understand that this is why they reach for history. They’ve no idea, none whatsoever, what has hit them. These American ingrates - they don’t understand, they don’t appreciate the genius that is George W. Bush, that is Dick Cheney. Everyone else is wrong and they are right; history will prove it. History, and the hope that it is kind to them, is all they have left.