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Follow the clues:

• Arizona Senator John McCain refuses to distance himself from the Bush Administration and becomes the president’s staunchest ally in the senate for the war in Iraq
• Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Scooter Libby is indicted for lying to the grand jury about his conduct in the CIA leak case and the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame in the fall of 2005
• McCain begins actively running (making the rounds nationally building support) for president in the fall of 2005
• Republicans get hammered in the 2006 mid-term elections
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (Cheney’s closest confidant in the adminsitration) resigns
• President Bush seeks more and more advice on international affairs from Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice without consulting the Vice President
  

• The Libby case goes to trial and while the litigation may be about Libby, the case focuses on Cheney and how he runs his office
• McCain limits public appearances during the closing stages of the Libby trial
• Cheney embarks on a whirlwind international tour as the Libby trial goes into jury deliberations
• Cheney extends tour as jury deliberations continue
• Cheney returns to the US and is diagnosed with blood clots in his legs

Those are the facts as we know them today…

Care to make a wager about tomorrow? How about -

• The Libby trial results in a hung jury, but the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, emboldened by the jury’s obvious belief that Cheney orchestrated the leak announces an intention to further investigate the affairs of the office of the Vice President.
• Bush announces that he has accepted the resignation of Vice President Cheney who is stepping down due to health reasons
• 

  In a joint statement from the White House Rose Garden Bush and McCain announce that Bush is nominating McCain as the replacement for Cheney

Now McCain can campaign full-time with the full benefits of the office of the Vice President…

The Republican establishment sees a light at the end of the tunnel.

Could happen.