RIP: Dick Cheney, One of the Most Influential Vice Presidents in U.S. History, Dies at 84.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey writes, “RIP to an American Original:”

Cheney and Bush himself lived to see a profound shift in the identities of the two major American parties. I wrote about this yesterday to some extent, analyzing the impact of massive amounts of foreign money on the Left that turned a working-class party into a globalist, socialist party that has now almost entirely detached from the American electorate. Few if any Democrats of note have stuck with the party’s identity as a farm and labor party representing blue-collar Americans; John Fetterman may be alone (and I’ll have more on him in a later post). By the time Barack Obama won office the first time, the transition to a party more oriented toward the European cognoscenti than rural America and tradespeople had been completed; the socialsm emerged from the shadows over the next sixteen years.

Republicans also transformed, in part because of the failure of Cheney’s efforts to change the world through democratic reforms imposed by American arms. Referred to as “neoconservative” both then and now, it required the same kind of global engagement and massive resource expenditures, only to not just fail but also backfire in key ways. Cheney certainly didn’t intend the failures, and there were some significant successes too, such as the way in which our forward strategy against terrorists prevented more attacks on the American homeland, at least on the scale of 9/11. Cheney never tired of pointing that out, and with justification.

At PJ Media, Matt Margolis adds, “As of this writing, former President George W. Bush has yet to release a statement. Cheney’s later years were marked by significant political shifts. He endorsed Trump for president in 2016 but later became a critic after Trump attacked his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, and he bizarrely endorsed Kamala Harris over Trump in the 2024 election.”