GUILIANI-LIEBERMAN '08. I'm a little confused by this post on the Plank. Jonathan Chait is correct that Rudy Giuliani would make a strong general election candidate for the Republicans if he could actually get the nomination but that doing so would be extremely difficult for him. Some of the same qualities that would make him appealing to swing voters make him unappealing to social conservatives.
But I think Chait's speculation that A) a Giuliani-Lieberman ticket would be a winning one for the GOP and B) "Lieberman strikes me as both a shrewd [Republican] choice for Veep and a likely candidate to get it," are both ill-considered. For the first: Given that a solid third of the country is socially conservative, does Chait really think that a GOP ticket of two socially liberal Northeastern ethnics would fair well? That they would carry all those Southern and Western states the GOP relies on? For one thing, I could see a red-state populist Democratic ticket, say Edwards-Schweizer, picking off some of those states. But more to the point, social conservatives would almost certainly revolt at any GOP nominee who supports reproductive freedom and equal rights for gays. If Giulani manages to get out of the primaries, he will probably have to pick someone like Sam Brownback as his running mate to keep the right wing in line. Picking Lieberman would just totally push them over the edge and probably result in a third-party candidacy from the right.
On the second point: hard as it is for me to defend Lieberman's Democratic credentials, I think Chait has Lieberman (or is it just Republicans?) wrong. While it's true, as Chait himself just convincingly argued, that Lieberman is beating Democrats over the head about Iraq in an intellectually dishonest manner, there is still not much concrete evidence to suggest that he really wants to switch parties. Taking the GOP VP nomination would be awfully risky for him: it would mean returning to the Senate in the minority party if he loses (assuming the Dems pick up Senate seats in '08 which they are likely to, given which seats are open) and alienating heavily blue Connecticut. Also, he'd have to completely sell out his positions on social issues. And would the Republicans accept someone with his record as a nominee? His biggest Republican bona-fide is support for the Iraq war, which even large minorities of Republicans don't support any longer. If present trends I'd say Chuck Hagel has a better chance than Joe Lieberman -- in either party.
--Ben Adler
