McCain Should Pick a Dem VP
May 24th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 2 Comments |
Jonah Goldberg is right: McCain should pick a Democrat (or ex-Dem like Lieberman) as his VP.
Evidently Goldberg’s article didn’t make Rush too happy. But Rush himself was making the same kind of argument before he came up with Operation Chaos. If you’ll remember, I wrote a little article on the subject in early March:
. . . What may be even more strange, however, is that Rush has been able to do something which the logic of his arguments [has] long supported, but which only Ann Coulter had the je ne sais quoi to actually promote: voting for a Democrat, rather than McCain.
The shockwaves created by Limbaugh and Coulter rippled throughout conservative political America. A secondary epicenter became National Review Online’s team blog, The Corner, where debate between contributors grew heated. Some, like Victor Davis Hanson, wanted to stick with McCain. Others, like John O’Sullivan and Mark Levin, either found it impossible to vote for McCain or thought there are good reasons to find it impossible.
And on Mark Levin’s show, NRO contributor Andy McCarthy made essentially the same case as Limbaugh had (audio here, minutes 52:40-58:25). The difference was that Limbaugh framed his statements as observations, while McCarthy framed his as a legitimate argument for not voting Republican.
But with the Texas and Ohio primaries, Rush found a way to actually “do” what his observations suggested conservative voters do, but under the guise of actually helping the Republican Party. The irony of this was that Limbaugh had been arguing that non-conservative Republican leadership suppresses conservative legislation and activism by conservative members of Congress. You can’t attack your party’s own leadership, so you either shut up or get in line.
Under a Democratic President, however, conservative Republicans would be expected to play a contrarian role, and would openly flaunt/live out their conservatism. So while it would not be good for the Grand Old Party to lose the Presidential election, it would be good for the Conservative Movement.
In other words, when it comes down to it, Limbaugh chooses “Movement Conservatism” over “Republicanism.”
And yet, the strange phenomenon of the “open primary” has given Rush a way for conservatives to both do what he seemed to want them to do (vote Democrat for President) and yet not get the Party angry. He has even taken to claiming that his opposition to McCain was temporally restricted to the time-period in which McCain still had legitimate Republican challengers.
No doubt Limbaugh still dislikes McCain, and his tactic hasn’t changed (“Vote Democrat for President!”); it’s just gone from implicit to explicit. The goal, however, seems to have changed: “Make straight in the desert a highway for McCain!”
How Limbaugh thinks this works with the “Conservatism First” theme, I’m not sure.
If McCain Picked a non-Republican for VP, conservatives in Congress could use the VP as a foil in the very way that Limbaugh and McCarthy argued. Every one of McCain’s positions with which congressional conservatives disagreed, they could paint as being a Democrat position.
Legitimate rebellion would remain a possibility, even while McCain could be trusted to do “the right thing” on some important issues.
Furthermore, if McCain chose a Dem VP, it would make clear what conservatives already know, but are hoping beyond hope might turn out to not be true (if only McCain would flip-flop on his traditional anti-conservative stances or on his tradition of working with Democrats rather than conservatives [by picking a conservative VP] — i.e., if McCain would suddenly stop being McCain): there is no conservative in this race.
Conservatives have a choice between three Democrats (or, by the time the Democrats get their nominee settled, two Democrats). We don’t have a horse in this race or a dog in this fight, this is not our battle — or whatever the metaphor. “So let’s make sure the better of the Democrats (i.e., McCain) wins.”
Conservatives are going to have to turn the entire election into one, giant, pseudo-Operation Chaos. We’re going to be “crossing over to vote in the other side’s election.” McCain’s picking a Dem VP would simply help make that clear.
If McCain followed Goldberg’s advice, it would make it seem less like conservatives were being asked to vote for the lesser of two evils, and more like they had the chance to make sure the better of two bad options got selected.
Those two may be logically equivalent, but they are semantically different. And that is hugely significant (excuse the pun).
Uhhm, could somebody explain “Operation Chaos” I tend to want to break things when I listen to Rush for very long, so I don’t tend to have much first hand knowledge of his ideas.
Thanks.
[...] course, I said it first, when encouraging McCain to pick a Dem as his VP: We [conservatives] don’t have a horse in this race or a dog in this fight, this is not our [...]