Since Bill Kristol and Joe Lieberman both believe in a policy of all-war, all-the-time and both seem to put more weight on warmongering than anything else in American politics, I wasn't surprised to see Kristol float a trial balloon suggesting Lieberman could be a good Republican vice presidential nominee. Peter Wehner liking the idea seems a bit more surprising, since Lieberman's views on most everything else are well to the left of the GOP consensus and surely it's not hard to find Republicans with Lieberman-like levels of fanatical devotion to the killing of foreigners.
« Obama's Speech | Main | Frustration »
Lieberman For Veep
11 Nov 2007 04:22 pm
Comments (17)
Totally unrelated, but hey Matt, Brown students are plagiarizing you! Now we can say you have truly made it big!
Yeah, and I'm sure Dobson and Co. would wholeheartedly embrace a Rudy-Lieberman ticket. Psh. Lieberman won't be the running mate because he does absolutely nothing to help the Republicans.
Actually, Giuliani-Lieberman would be a very dangerous ticket against the Democrats. They can neutralize the abortion and social issues and run on national security.
This would work because it would create the illusion of a bipartisan coalition of Very Serious People Who Believe in War and Torture.... Oh, wonderful.
Just because a certain pairing has a sort of Frankenstein feel to it does not mean that it would be particularly monstrous for its opponents. Does Lieberman have any real standing with Democrats nationally these days? With independents? Is there any evidence that he's an effective campaigner?
So many candidacies make sense on paper if you squint at them for a while. Most of them are complete flubs in practice.
Re Lieberman
A Lieberman/Giuliani ticket makes no sense as it has no geographical balance, Giuliani being from New York and Lieberman from neighboring Connecticut. On the other hand, a McCain/Lieberman makes some sense, at least relative to geographic balance.
Matt,
That's a nice strawman there. It's every bit as useful as asserting that all pro-choice people love killing babies.
I'm sorry, but putting Lieberman on the Republican ticket would be stupid. They don't need to win over the portion of the electorate that loves torture and pre-emptive unilateral wars against nations that have majority Muslim populations.
Can anybody name a true Maverick-type major party VP candidate from the past 50 or so years? In the past century? Parties sometimes nominate interesting, less partisan Presidential candidates (Wilkie had been an FDR supporter before running as a Republican in 1940), but the number two spot usually goes to somebody the base loves. If the Republican base loves Joe Lieberman, it is dependent upon him being a Democrat who accepts their idiotic foreign policy positions. But a pro-choice, pro-gay rights former running mate of the other party who has a progressive record on environmental and immigration issues as the number 2?
I'm sorry, they shouldn't do this. It's fun to mock the Republican base for some of its hard right positions, but if Rudy's the nominee, it'd be a total slap in their face to put Joe Lieberman up there. The mainstream media, with its condescending disrespect toward partisan activists, would gobble it up, but it wouldn't fly with the Republican base. Nor should it. Nor should the Republicans do this when there is talk among some Evangelicals about embracing Democratic positions.
So, basically, if the Republicans want to make Lieberman their veep candidate, I'll welcome it as happily as Bill Kristol. Mitt or Rudy or whoever might as well write his concession speech.
The only "GOP consensus" that exists on any topic is that Hillary Clinton is bad.
It's difficult to overstate the stupidity and cowardice that Liebermans's choice by Gore represents. As politicians go Gore is certainly among the better of the breed but when you consider Joe as VP and Bob Shrum as campaign head the brain dead aspect of the Democratic Party is thrown into sharp relief.
rapier, the fact is, gore's choice of lieberman won him the election (what do you think brought all those jewish voters in palm beach out there to be confounded by theresa laporte's ballot design?).
putting that aside, while joltin' joe clearly was problematic even in 2000, he was nowhere near as stupid as he has become since then, so i can certainly see why the party that likes stupid would consider him a worthy choice in 2008.
as for james robertson, one looks in vain for the strawman he claims is present in matthew's post. i'm guessing he's referencing the "all war all the time," that's a factual description of where kristol, lieberman, and the other wild-eyed fanatics of right-wing land are on national security policy matters.
Joe Lieberman is interesting only to the extent that he remains a Democrat and, therefore, a maverick for his foreign policy views.
The minute he becomes a Republican, even to take the VP slot, he becomes another war-mongerer among war-mongerers. And, his more liberal than the GOP stance on other issues becomes a real problem.
Yeah, Kristol's line is hilarious: "Why go for a victory when you could have a realignment?" The only "realignment" would be forcing Lieberman to abandon any pretense of being a Democrat or caucusing with them. Oh -- that, and forcing Republicans to admit they don't actually care about abortion. And the most unfortunate thing about a Lieberman VP candidacy would be that since his ticket would lose, he'd still be a Senator afterwards.
Romney-Lieberman would be the most entertaining combo.
I'd love to see the Republicans ask their fundie base to vote for a Mormon and a Jew at the same time.
rapier, the fact is, gore's choice of lieberman won him the election (what do you think brought all those jewish voters in palm beach out there to be confounded by theresa laporte's ballot design?).
Yeah, because otherwise Jew's loved republicans? Find me one iota of evidence that Joe Lieberman attracted one republican or even independent Jewish voter. *Maybe* he got somebody out of Lieberman, some section of wierd swing voter out there somewhere, but I seriously have doubts that Florida's Jewish population cared for Lieberman any more than any other section of the democratic voting bloc.
You can't even blame The Lobby for that one. They were seriously worried about Bush in 2000. His father went off the reservation on Israel a few times and they (and the Israeli government) were seriously off-put by the idea of the Lesser taking charge again.
"rapier, the fact is, gore's choice of lieberman won him the election (what do you think brought all those jewish voters in palm beach out there to be confounded by theresa laporte's ballot design?)."
Wow, because old people never vote in huge numbers and Jewish-Americans never vote for the Democrat.
Comments closed November 25, 2007.
| 
Heads in the Sand
Obviously the point of this is to set up the Zell Miller moment of the 2008 convention. What's amazing is that these Republicans consider that speech to have been a success. Matt's take at the time was one of several especially good ones. Berube also springs to mind.
Posted by Marshall | November 11, 2007 4:55 PM