A McCain-Lieberman ticket would certainly offer a
sharp contrast with the hypothetical Obama-Webb
ticket I explore on the main site today: All in on Iraq versus all
out; a more or less former Democrat on the GOP ticket and a former
Republican on the Democratic ticket; Al Gore's running mate versus
Ronald Reagan's navy secretary but not on the the tickets you'd
expect by those descriptions. But for most of the reasons spelled
out here by Ross Douthat, I don't think it would
actually be a very good idea.
The reality is suggestions like Stuart Rothenberg's come from
that time period between 9/11 and, at the latest, 2004 when it
looked like there was going to be a major migration of socially
liberal hawks into the GOP. That seems farfetched today, though it
probably wouldn't if the current Iraq war was as popular as the
first Persian Gulf War. Even when it looked like all the stars were
aligned for Rudy Giuliani, who had the best 2007 of any Republican
presidential candidate, and the religious right had no coherent
strategy for stopping him, the national security issue wasn't
enough to cover his social-issues deficit.
One advantage Lieberman might have over Giuliani is that,
through his work with Bill Bennett against sexually explicit music
and his family values talk, he has a better reputation among social
conservatives. In fact, unlike Giuliani (who was arguably better on
free-market economics than any GOP candidate besides Ron Paul),
Lieberman generally has a reputation for being much more
conservative than he actually is. Conservatives might be slow to
mobilize against him based on this reputation. But once they
discovered his repeated votes for partial-birth abortion and
against tax cuts, among many other offenses, mobilize they
would.
McCain simply isn't sufficiently trusted by economic and social
conservatives to pick a running mate who is neither in order to
shore up the one part of the Republican/conservative coalition
where he needs no additional reinforcement. Maybe the fact that
Lieberman is almost perfectly aligned against my own policy views
is blinding me to the strategic brilliance of a McCain-Lieberman
ticket, but I don't think so.
topics:
Economics, Abortion, Iraq
