Some useful political memes have occurred to me recently as “candidates” to be spread about the political memepool.
The corporate Democrats have been fuming about the challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman from Ned Lamont. Since it looks like Lieberman will lose the Democratic primary, he’s going to run as an “independent,” which could conceivably split the Democratic Party in Connecticut and elect a Republican Senator to replace Lieberman. New meme: “How would replacing Lieberman with an official Republican change anything?” Whining Joe Lieberman has voted repeatedly with the Republican Party and the Bush Regime for the last several years on almost every important issue, including Operation Iraqi Looting and the Traitor Act. Connecticut already has a Republican Senator named Lieberman, so a different Republican might actually improve things.
Who knows, it could be one of those moderate, fiscally conservative Republicans one finds in the Northeast. Which leads me to another useful meme: “the Republican wing of the Republican Party” or the “real Republicans.” Just as non-corporate Dems are calling themselves the real Democrats and the party’s Democratic wing, spreading around the counterpart meme could help to separate out the sane Republicans from the neocons and the theocons. Minimal result? We split the Republican vote the same way progressive candidates are (supposedly) splitting the Democratic vote. Maximal result? We encourage sane people of all parties to vote against the corporatists and lunatics now running Congress.
Gee, what would happen if progressive candidates in the Democratic Party primaries were to arrange televised and/or webcast debates with Goldwater Republicans running in their primaries, plus Greens and Libertarians, leaving the corporatist candidates out of the show entirely? We could call them “the Not-for-Sale Candidates’ Debates.”
And how about an Al Gore/RFK Jr. ticket in 2008? I got that idea from my dear friend Joy Williams of Fancy Pants Elitist and it’s got a bit of a ring to it…
Well, Lamont can certainly claim to be running against two Republicans in the general election! I suspect he could push that line strongly to good effect.
And I have to wonder if having Whining Joe running as an independent won’t split the Republican vote, also–or instead of the Democratic vote. I imagine the Lamont campaign will yoke Joe up to the Bush wagon and see if he can carry that sort of baggage around.
As much as it bums me out to say it, I think the chance of a Republican vote split in any significant way is sadly unlikely. It always seems to me that Republicans are far better at just sucking it up and going with the party, once the party does indeed make their choice. Yellow-dog Republicans (ie., if the Republicans ran a yellow dog for office, these people would vote for it) seem to make up the bulk of the party.
My inner libertarian is a horrible cynic.