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WASHINGTON (CNN) — The same day Dick Cheney delivered a major speech on the battle against terrorism, a new national poll suggests that favorable opinions of the former vice president are on the rise.

But the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, released Wednesday morning, indicates that a majority of Americans still have an unfavorable opinion of Cheney.

Fifty-five percent of people questioned in the poll say they have an unfavorable opinion of the former vice president. Thirty-seven percent say they have a favorable opinion of Cheney, up eight points from January when he left office.

In the past two months the former vice president has become a frequent critic of the new Administration in numerous national media interviews.

The reason for this is simple. When Mr. Cheney was vice president he had to be bound by the wishes of George W Bush in the way he represented the administration in public. Mr. Bush believed that the partisan back and forth of Washington "politics as usual" were beneath the dignity of the Oval Office and would not participate, or allow his surrogates to participate.

Because Cheney was unable to fire back at his critics the Democrat party and its propaganda organs (the mainstream media) were given carte blanc to define his image before the public.

Now that Mr. Cheney is a free agent he is allowed to speak his mind as he sees fit and the public is being given a chance to evaluate the former vice president based on truth rather than on the far left's lies.

It is natural therefore that the public's opinion of Mr. Cheney is improving since the general public is not made up of barking moonbats who will believe dailykos or Huffington Post over the evidence of their own eyes and ears.

This is why the hard left (also known as elected Democrats and the mainstream media) is falling to the ground in paroxysms of foaming madness over Mr. Cheney's public comments. They know that he is persuasive and that compared to him the Obama administration comes off sounding like the more unstable members of the local college CPUSA chapter.

Since Obama is not likely to be able to realize his fantasy of creating an American GULAG, at least in his first term, and since Dick Cheney will not shut up we can expect his stock to rise - and little Barry's to fall - as time goes by.