Cheney gives Swallow assist

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.