Sticking It To Dick

The White House is not taking Dick Cheney's nastiness lying down.

"It is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the Administration than condemning the attackers," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer wrote on the White House's official blog. "Unfortunately too many are engaged in the typical Washington game of pointing fingers and making political hay, instead of working together to find solutions to make our country safer."

Ouch.  Oh, but Pfeiffer works his way inside Cheney's reach and goes for the body blows:

"To put it simply: this President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action," Pffeifer writes. "Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President."

Pfeifer also takes issue with the former vice president's contention that Obama "pretends we aren't at [war]," saying the president and members of his administration have referred to being at war with al Qaeda several times.

"There are numerous…public statements that explicitly state we are at war," writes Pfeifer. "The difference is this: President Obama doesn't need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic ("terrorism"), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered."

Pfeiffer's completely salient point aside (Sorry Dick, you and Dubya blew it for seven years) I'm liking this new Democrats Now With Spines thing.  They've finally figured out that no matter what they do, the Republicans will punch them in the mouth for it.

It's long past time to punch back.