{"id":14273,"date":"2008-01-17T16:45:41","date_gmt":"2008-01-17T21:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14273.html"},"modified":"2008-01-17T16:45:41","modified_gmt":"2008-01-17T21:45:41","slug":"mccain-renews-speculation-about-lieberman-as-running-mate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccain-renews-speculation-about-lieberman-as-running-mate\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain renews speculation about Lieberman as running mate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend, Bob Novak cited<\/a> close advisors of John McCain, concluding “there is no possibility that Independent Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman would be McCain’s vice presidential running mate on the Republican ticket.”<\/p>\n

But McCain apparently wants to keep the speculation brewing<\/a> anyway.<\/p>\n

There’s been plenty of speculation since self-described Democratic-independent Sen. Joe Lieberman started stumping for Sen. John McCain in December that Al Gore’s 2000 running mate might reprise that role for his Republican friend.<\/p>\n

McCain did little to dissuade Washington Wire of that notion. The Arizona senator was speaking Wednesday evening at town hall-style meeting at T-Bones Steakhouse and Saloon in Lake Wylie, S.C. (Atmosphere: various taxidermied critters on the wall, including a skunk.)<\/p>\n

“He’d be a great partner in any endeavor, including joining America together,” McCain said in response to a question on the Lieberman factor. “Let’s reach across the aisle, let’s work together for America. That’s what Joe Lieberman is all about.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’d argue that Joe Lieberman is “all about” something different altogether, but let’s put that aside for the time being.<\/p>\n

McCain’s coy rhetoric notwithstanding, I still think this is terribly far-fetched.
\n
\nSeveral relatively high-profile conservatives were talking up this pairing a few months ago, including the Weekly Standard’s William Kristol<\/a> and National Review’s Peter Wehner<\/a>, but that doesn’t mean it’s likely.<\/p>\n

The principal obstacle right now between John McCain and the Republican nomination is that he’s not doing very well with actual Republicans<\/a>. The way to address this problem, at least from his perspective, probably isn’t to talk openly about adding a self-identified “Independent Democrat” to the GOP ticket.<\/p>\n

As humiliating as Lieberman is on matters of foreign policy and national security, he’s also fairly liberal on most domestic policy matters, including abortion and gay rights. Is the Republican Party so devoid of leaders that can win a national election that it has to look beyond the GOP for running mates? I really doubt the party’s rank and file think so.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend, Bob Novak cited close advisors of John McCain, concluding “there is no possibility that Independent Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman would be McCain’s vice presidential running mate on the Republican ticket.” But McCain apparently wants to keep the speculation brewing anyway. There’s been plenty of speculation since self-described Democratic-independent Sen. Joe Lieberman started […]<\/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-14273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14273","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=14273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}