Bill Kristol is suggesting that the Republicans choose Joe Lieberman as their Vice Presidential candidate in 2008. His column discusses Lieberman's recent speech on Iraq and appears in the Weekly Standard:
Read the whole speech on Lieberman's website. As for Rudy and John and Fred and Mitt and Mike: Take a break from kissing babies to pick up the phone and congratulate Joe. Seek his endorsement after you win the nomination. What the heck--offer him the vice presidency. (Rudy, you might try State or Defense, since you'll need a pro-life running mate.) But McCain-Lieberman, Thompson-Lieberman, Romney-Lieberman, Huckabee-Lieberman--those sound like winning tickets to us. It's true, given the behavior of the congressional Democrats, the GOP nominee might well win with a more conventional running mate. But why settle for a victory if you can have a realignment?
It's hard to tell whether Kristol was serious about this or just making a sarcastic joke. But let's take him at his word and assume that he believes putting Joe Lieberman on the Republican presidential ticket could cause a historic realignment of the parties.
One has to wonder who Kristol believes would "realign" in this scenario? Is he talking about pro-war Democrats? According to a new Rasmussen poll 83% of Democrats want our troops brought home from Iraq within a year. So maybe Kristol believes that the Republicans should nominate a pro-abortion and pro-gay rights Vice President in order to swing that remaining 17% of Democrats over to the Republican Party?
Sounds like a great idea to me Bill. Whoever wins the Republican nomination (excluding longshot Ron Paul) we are guaranteed that they will be in favor of prolonging the war in Iraq indefinitely anyway so we might as well get two social liberals to fill the ticket if we can. I'm sure the right-wingers and evangelicals will warmly embrace Lieberman who was given an 8% conservative ranking by the American Conservative Union in 2005. We know how much they love Rudy Giuliani, so what damage could another social liberal on the ticket do?
Believe it or not folks, they pay Bill Kristol to write this stuff!
