Before it's all over they'll have people believing that 9/11/01 occurred on Bill Clinton's watch

And perhaps they'll even have the teabaggers believing that George W. Bush was never president; that we morphed somehow right from Bill Clinton from Barack Obama. How that's going to fit together with the Golden Reign of Dick Cheney, I have no idea, but I'm sure they'll find a way.

In the wake of the WSJ editorial echoing the longing of the right to have Biggus Dickus run for President in 2012 (with its accompanying longing for a nice attack on this country in order to help the effort along), Olbermann poked the appropriate fun at the whole idea on Countdown last night:

(Fellow Morning Sedition fans will find themselves wondering if the "Jonathan Larsen" credited as the writer of the mock ad is the same Jonathan Larsen who used to produce the late and lamented morning radio show.)

Chris Kofinis may have been beside himself with laughter, but I'm not sure you can discount the idea. George Bush liked the trappings of power, but when the going got tough, he started wanting to just go home and hit the bottle again. But Cheney needs power; he needs the power to implement wars and commit enough mayhem so that enough people die to fill the black hole in himself which he needs to keep stocked at all times with fresh human souls. And with the Republican field right now seemingly limited to a boring and undistinguished governor of Minnesota, the Pillsbury Doughboy's evil twin, and two insane women, I wouldn't count Cheney out.

Cheney's "We kept this country safe after 9/11" meme is insulting to those of us with half a brain. There's no longer any hiding that Richard Clarke and others were trying to get the Bush Administration to take seriously the threat of another attack. We all know now about the Presidential Daily Briefing that made pretty clear that something was about to happen. We all know about the curious coincidences in the days before the attacks that have kept conspiracy theorists hopping ever since. There's no legitimate excuse Cheney can make for these attacks playing out the way they did. And yet there is such hunger on the right for a stern, authoritarian father figure that they are eager to have Cheney come out from the hole under the stairs even during the day just to rescue their country from Scary Negroes™ and others who don't think authoritarianism is synonymous with freedom.

I think it's premature for Olbermann and Kofinis to be laughing, though. Because if the economy does not improve; if health care reform turns out (as I fear it will) to be nothing but a mandate to buy crappy insurance from companies who won't pay claims and $4000 in tax increases for every family with family coverage through their jobs as they are taxed on the entire value of the premiums; if there are still no jobs and if foreclosures are rampant, Americans would vote for Satan himself. And in Cheney, they just might get their chance.