Alphonse D'Amato to Bush: "Dump Cheney"

Alphonse D'Amato, the former New York Republican senator, told a New York cable news channel Tuesday night that he thought George W. Bush ought to dump Dick Cheney as VP and get Colin Powell instead. "I think we can do better." The former senator said he believed Powell would run with Bush if the position was offered to him. (Yeah, right! But first Powell would have to climb out of that deep freeze where El Presidente has had him stowed.) Powell as the VP candidate, said D'Amato, "would change politics in America for the better." "Instead of millions of African-Americans having their votes taken for granted or just saying, 'Republicans don't care about us, they don't reach out to us,' this would send an incredible signal," D'Amato said.

The gritting of teeth among Republican Party pooh-bahs didn't slow D'Amato down one bit. He repeated his "dump Cheney" advice on Wednesday to the Associated Press and added John McCain as another possible replacement for Cheney. Now there's a match-up we'd pay money to see, El Presidente introducing as his running mate the man he claimed was too mentally unbalanced to be president back during the South Carolina primary in 2000.