McCain's Veep to Be ... Lieberman?

Posted by Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake at 3:02 PM on August 19, 2008.

Noted Duran Duran scholar Kathryn Jean Lopez says Rush Limbaugh no likey Lieberman for VP:

If John McCain picks Joe Lieberman as his running mate, he would “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,” as radio talk-show king Rush Limbaugh put it in an e-mail last night.

Obviously, I have an elaborate nightmare where Joe Lieberman gets the VP nod, McCain wins, then dies -- and we're looking at a President Lieberman. At which point me, Tim Tagaris, Maura Keaney, Ed Anderson and a host of others all wind up in Guantanamo Bay.

Now I may just be engaging in extraordinary cynicism here. But over the years, I've watched Arlen Specter set himself up as conscience of the Senate and rail against the administration's abuse of executive powers, at which point everyone invests him with the moral authority to adjudicate the situation and then he lets 'em off the hook. And I worry that KJ and the Sacred Sperm Patrol are being likewise suckered.

Because despite railing against Lieberman on his Friday show, I have a feeling Rush can be swayed:

[Lieberman's] really gutsy, I think, because he's bucking his own party, he's standing up to his own party, standing up to Jack Murtha, standing up to the media, standing up to all the left out there and basically giving them the facts, and giving them reason and logic, and they don't want to hear it because they're invested in defeat. Lieberman is talking victory and these people don't connect with that. It's not in their lexicon.

Of course, Joe had made NARAL and Planned Parenthood look like putzes by saying that he was "wrong" and Alito is a great judge, so it may not be a simple case of Rush jujitsu -- Holy Joe may be getting ready to meet him half way.


McCain announces his VP choice in Ohio the day after Obama's Invesco speech. My showbiz gene says he announces that his choice is Lieberman, the media goes apeshit with the narrative of Joe being the Democratic candidate in 2000 and the Republican choice in 2008, and just as Obama puts the gloves on, McCain steals his bipartisan thunder. And more importantly, his convention bounce.


Yes he needs the fundies, but John McCain is a media creature and the temptation for all that hot monkey press love is just too juicy.


I sure hope this is just my dark thoughts getting the best of me. Because I do not look good in orange.

Tagged as: lieberman, vice president, mccain

Jane Hamsher is the founder of FireDogLake. Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect.