Call it the liberal-libertarian ticket, where left meets right and Democrat Dennis Kucinich picks Republican Ron Paul to be his vice president.<\/p>\n
Kucinich, the Cleveland congressman running in a longshot bid to become president, suggested it himself Sunday.<\/p>\n
“I’m thinking about Ron Paul” as a running mate, Kucinich told a crowd of about 70 supporters at a house party here, one of numerous stops throughout New Hampshire over the Thanksgiving weekend. A Kucinich-Paul administration could bring people together “to balance the energies in this country,” Kucinich said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I suppose I know what Kucinich means, but serious presidential hopefuls generally don’t consider running mates with whom they disagree on almost everything<\/i>, including fundamental beliefs about the size, scope, and power of the government.<\/p>\n
And as it turns out, Ron Paul wouldn’t even consider it.
\n<\/p>\n
“Dr. Paul and Rep. Kucinich are friends and there is a lot of mutual respect,” Paul communications director Jesse Benton said in an e-mail when asked whether a running-mate spot on the Kucinich ticket would be attractive to Paul. “They have worked, and will continue to work, together on ending the war and protecting civil liberties.<\/p>\n
“However, Ron wants to substantially cut the size and scope of the federal government. There are too many differences on issues such as taxes and spending to think a joint ticket would be possible.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Granted, Paul and Kucinich appear to largely agree on national security matters, including the war in Iraq and the Patriot Act. But then, there’s everything else.<\/p>\n
Presidential candidates, when considering running mates, are supposed to eye those who agree<\/i> with them on the future. Ideally, the two would be partners, aiming for the same goals.<\/p>\n
Kucinich wants a bigger government; Paul wants a smaller one. Kucinich wants the feds to play a much larger role in everything from healthcare to education to retirement security; Paul wants to the feds to play no role in these issues whatsoever, and privatize as much as humanly possible. Kucinich is pro-choice, Paul is pro-life. Sounds like a match made in … somewhere unpleasant.<\/p>\n
Sure, they’re both on the outside looking in when it comes to their respective parties, but that’s not exactly a recipe for a coherent presidential ticket — Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul are opposites<\/i>.<\/p>\n
That Kucinich claims to be a liberal champion while considering a running mate who would eliminate most of the government is not exactly a good sign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dennis Kucinich is generally not taken seriously as a credible presidential candidate, and is generally invited to participate in presidential debates because organizers can’t think of a rationale to block a sitting member of Congress. A lot of observers are under the impression that Kucinich is running just to run — a presidential campaign, even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}