With the country completely polarized as it is, would you support a Kerry/McCain ticket (given McCain remains a Republican)?
Can a Republican even join the Democrat on a presidential ticket?
If they ran on a platform of “Uniting the Country” how could they not win?
michael
McCain has been explicit in stating that he would not consider being the VP selection for the Democratic ticket.
Yeah, he was pretty emphatic in his interview (forget when it was now) that he wouldn’t even consider it.
They would win. McCain has been asked about the possibility on several occasions and has said he would not accept the invitation to be his friend’s running mate.
It is possible for a Republican and Democrat to run on the same ticket. It happened in 1864 with the Lincoln/Jackson ticket. They may have run as the candidates of the Union or Unionist Party instead of the Republican Party.
But talk of a Kerrey McCain ticket is just talk for pundits. Remember the rumors of the Reagan Ford ticket in 1980? They reached their peak about five minutes before George HW Bush became the VP nominee. There are two basic reasons why this won’t happen.
First, since Senator McCain remains co-chairman of Bush-Cheney 2004, it would be odd for him to accept the other party’s nomination as VP. Second, the Democrats would never nominate someone as ardently pro-life as Senator McCain as their VP. Governor Casey, one of most prominent pro-life Democrats in the last 15 years, was not a speaker at the Democratic Convention in either 1988 or 1992 because he was pro life.
I would not vote for a Kerrey-McCain ticket and doubt it would do much to unify the country. Talk of it is sure to make the eventual Democratic nominees look much weaker by comparison so I would like the talk to continue for as long as possible for partisan political reasons.
“Second, the Democrats would never nominate someone as ardently pro-life as Senator McCain as their VP.”
McCain said in 1999 while campaigning for President:
“I’m for going back to the platform as it was in 1980. I believe we are an inclusive party and we can be so without changing our principles,”
The 1980 platform “opposes abortion but recognizes differing views on the issue among Republicans.”
CTL, do you feel the country is polarized? If so, do you feel it needs to be fixed? To bring this country back together, compromises need to be made by both sides. Don’t you agree? Or perhaps do you think that the country is not that bad off, once we get rid of the half of the population that disagrees with you?
michael
sure a republican can join the democratic ticket … nothing written in stone to prevent it but clearly partisanship would not allow it … only way this can happen is if mccain switches parties … which he has said he would not do
Hypothetically then, would you (and others) support a Kerry/McCain ticket?
michael
hypothetically speaking … yes i would support that ticket
Senator McCain’s voting record on abortion is consistently pro-life. The overwhelming majority of the delegates to the DNC will be just as consistently pro-choice. I do not believe that you could get a majority of them to vote for a VP candidate that is as consistently pro-life as Senator McCain.
Is the country polarized? On some issues. But, why do you think that compromise is such a virtue? Sometimes, a compromise makes sense because you cannot get everything that you want in a democracy and you can get some of what you want by compromising. But, in other cases, compromising important principles ends up being the same thing as abandoning them. Simply compromising every issue makes a virtue of not being able to make a decision.
In this particular election, we do have a significant choice to make that will affect how, or even whether, this country defends itself against the barbarians that sawed off Nick Berg’s head and drove planes into the WTC and the Pentagon. We really cannot compromise with the segment of the Muslim world that wants to return to the Middle Ages. A presidential candidate that compromises by voting for and against the Iraq War, voting for the PATRIOT Act and calling for its repeal, and a whole list of other issues is not the leader we need.