Mr Cheney made clear Sunday which side he's on, saying he'd rather follow firebrand archconservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh than moderate former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Mr Cheney appeared to write his one-time colleague Mr Powell out of the struggling party and add to infighting among the once-dominant Republicans. Mr Powell has said the Republicans need to be more inclusive or risk becoming irrelevant.

Asked about recent verbal broadsides between Mr Limbaugh and Mr Powell, Mr Cheney said, 'If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh. My take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican.'

Mr Powell, who was secretary of state under President George W. Bush and held the top US military post under President George H.W. Bush, endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president last year.

Under the younger Mr Bush, Mr Powell initially backed action against Iraq's Saddam Hussein and delivered a famous UN speech laying out the US case.

But Mr Powell and Mr Cheney increasingly parted ways over the Bush administration's policies on the war and terrorism, with Mr Cheney usually prevailing. Mr Powell left the administration after Mr Bush's first term.

Wading into the debate over the Republicans' future, Mr Cheney embraced efforts to expand the party by ex-Govsernors Jeb Bush of Florida and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and the House of Representatives' No. 2 Republican, Rep Eric Cantor.

He called efforts by George W. Bush's brother Jeb, along with Cantor and Romney, as 'a good thing to do,' but set a limit on how far the party should go.

For months, Mr Powell has urged the party to turn away from the acid-tongued Mr Limbaugh. 'I think what Rush does as an entertainer diminishes the party and intrudes or inserts into our public life a kind of nastiness that we would be better to do without,' Mr Powell said. -- AP