Is Sarah Palin the New Dick Cheney?

The LA Times asks this question today.

From their blog:

Of course Sarah Palin is much cuter than Dick Cheney. As the must-have Republican political button from St. Paul put it: “Hottest VP From Coldest State.”

And it sounds like she’s better with a gun than the vice president, who accidentally shot a friend while on a hunting trip in southern Texas.

But lots of folks are beginning to draw a parallel between Cheney, with his secret meetings on energy policy, and Palin, the pistol-packing soccer mom who took on — and beat — the political establishment in Alaska.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, in an interview today with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, calls Palin a “skilled politician” but says his rival Republican John McCain “chose somebody who may be even more aligned with George Bush — or Dick Cheney — or the politics we’ve seen over the last eight years — than John McCain himself is.”

And last week on the same program, John Kerry, the Democrats’ 2004 presidential nominee, said Palin is a member of the “flat earth caucus” whose views of climate change are reminiscent of Vice President Cheney.

“With the choice of Gov. Palin, it’s now the third term of Dick Cheney, because what he’s done is he’s chosen somebody who actually doesn’t believe that climate change is man-made,” said Kerry, who also called Palin “Cheney-esque” in her views of social issues.