Vice President Dick Cheney says President Bush doesn't want to be a "lonely winner."
And so it is up to GOP-dominated states like Utah to send only Republicans back to the U.S. House and U.S. Senate this November, Cheney told a crowd of about 350 people Wednesday in the Little America Hotel at a John Swallow For Congress fund-raiser.
Swallow has a 2002 rematch with Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson in the 2nd District this year.
Swallow lost by fewer than 1,600 votes to Matheson two years ago. The $250-per-person fund raiser could net Swallow $60,000 or $70,000 after his campaign pays for Cheney's visit. But at last count, Matheson had more than $1 million in cash to Swallow's $220,000.
Cheney was only in Salt Lake briefly before flying to Jackson, Wyo., where he has a home. Cheney made no public appearances in Utah — the fund raiser was by invitation only — and did not make himself available to the news media for questions.
Cheney gave what could fairly be called a stump speech, with a number of phrases echoing other Cheney campaign stops this week. The vice president is visibly traveling the West as Bush takes a week vacation in Texas while Democrats meet in their national convention in Boston.
"Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness," Cheney repeated from speeches earlier this week.
Cheney even told a few jokes Wednesday that he told two years ago when he and wife Lynne attended a 2002 Swallow fund raiser in Salt Lake.
One new Cheney tidbit in the 2004 appearance: Former Utah GOP gubernatorial candidate Fred Lampropoulos, who acted as master of ceremonies Wednesday, told a story about Cheney after the vice president and his wife left the room.
Lampropoulos, through his Merit Medical firm, knows Cheney's cardiologist. And the man recently told Lampropoulos that in one of the vice president's heart operations, mischievous doctors and nurses painted Cheney's toe-nails while he was under anesthesia and put a paste-on tatoo on his hip. Lampropoulos didn't say what Cheney thought of the highjinks after he came to.
Cheney said Bush can't properly govern America if Democrats win control of the U.S. Senate, House or both this November. Swallow's victory is important in keeping or expanding the current 11-seat GOP majority in the 435-member House, Cheney said.
Swallow is a "good, decent, humble man — the 2nd District deserves him," said Cheney.
The vice president then listed programs a Democratic-majority Congress would fight to overturn: The Bush tax cuts, a national energy plan, a healthy-forest initiative, banning partial-birth abortions, among others.
Ironically, many of the items Cheney mentioned were actually supported by Matheson, who has faced criticism in his own Democrat Party for voting so often with House Republicans and the president.
But don't be fooled, said Swallow. Democrats and Matheson "are not like us," he said referring to Republicans being the majority of the state's citizens. "There are real differences between us and them."
He then criticized Matheson for changing campaign slogans over two years ago. "You remember the old one? Matheson Makes Sense." But Matheson's new slogan, says Swallow, is Putting Utah First.
"He can't say he makes sense anymore," said Swallow, because 75 percent of the time Matheson votes with Democrats. "So only 25 percent of the time he makes sense" since most Utahns support a GOP/Bush agenda.
Swallow said his son pointed out: "Dad, a 25-percent grade is failing."
Both Cheney and Swallow said the Democratic National Convention, running this week in Boston, is trying to fool Americans into believing Bush is weak, the country is in bad shape, and they have answers.
But Democrats are just offering "failed thinking of the past. And we aren't going back," said Cheney.
Gov. Olene Walker promised Cheney that Utahns would give the Bush/Cheney ticket the largest victory margin in the nation. Not a risky promise. Utahns have voted for the Republican presidential candidate ever since 1964.
And a new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll by Dan Jones & Associates shows if the election were today, Bush has 63 percent support to Sen. John Kerry's 28 percent support. In 2000, Utah gave Bush his largest percentage victory of any state, too.
Utahns were basically split over the question of whether Bush should keep Cheney on the ticket this year. Twenty-one percent said Cheney on the ticket will help Bush's re-election, 18 percent said it would hurt, but 58 percent said whether Cheney is on the ticket or not makes no difference to them. Only 29 percent of Utah Republicans thought keeping Cheney on the ticket would help Bush, Jones found in a survey taken earlier this month.
About half of Cheney's 15-minute speech was about Iraq and protecting the United States from terrorists.
He said Kerry and his vice-presidential running mate, Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., may have supported the original vote to go to war in Iraq, but later when the Senate voted 87-12 to provide "body armor, hazard pay, jet fuel and ammunition" to in-field troops, Kerry and Edwards were in the small group voting "no."
Kerry said the bill and situation were "complicated," said Cheney. "But John Swallow knows, that is never a complicated choice. And George Bush supports them 100 percent."
Bush has given major tax cuts each year for three years, said Cheney. While Kerry has voted 350 times to raise taxes in his years in office. "That averages out to be (a tax-hike vote) once every three weeks the last 20 years," Cheney told the cheering crowd, which was stacked with current and past GOP officeholders.
E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com