Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich: The Real Dream Team
Forget McCain and Lieberman. This would be the ultimate bipartisan match.
Ron Paul’s plan to host a “mini-convention” in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 2 to counter the GOP’s nominating confab for John McCain — the man he won’t endorse — is an excellent idea, although the Texas congressman isn’t thinking big enough.
Why doesn’t isolationism’s master of ceremonies use the occasion to inaugurate a new third party with himself and Dennis Kucinich slated as running mates? The real dream ticket to be had in this election, at least in certain overlapping quarters of the political fever swamps, consists of the gaunt doctor and the diminutive vegan.
Just think of the news coverage this Platonic ideal of bipartisanship would engender. The far left and the far right find a common foothold in the 21st century that is enabled by two separate but interwoven phenomena. First, the Internet, where no paranoid conspiracist need ever blog alone, and secondly, the Iraq war, which has supposedly finished off liberal interventionism, despite the fact that both major party candidates for president are avowed adherents to it (even if one of them uses “neoconservative” as a slur).
Both Paul and Kucinich want for unity despite grassroots efforts to get the vote rocked in their respective favors. And they have more to agree on than they do to fight about. Both are against regime change, the Patriot Act, NAFTA, the World Bank, capital punishment, the War on Drugs, Guantanamo Bay, the cancellation of the X-Files, FISA, and letting George W. Bush leave office temporally. Both tend to be pro-life on principle, but are opposed to any federal legislation that might make inroads into Roe v. Wade.
Even points of division between them aren’t so terribly stark and may actually prove complementary. The Paul imprimatur has been lent to hysterical racism and homophobia, while Kucinich is a huggable one-worlder who nevertheless cozies up to Bashar al-Assad and a Latin America generalissimo who bears about as much resemblance to a socialist as Paul does to Leo Strauss.
Both enjoy a wide range of celebrity backers that might make for memorable photo ops during a joint caucus: Gore Vidal calling Tucker Carlson a blow-dried crypto-fascist, Viggo Mortensen looking especially dedicated to the Ohio hobbit with the leggy wife, Taki Theodoracopulos asking if anyone’s seen his blow.
Never has the culture been more poised for a synergy of the fringes. In reviewing Patrick J. Buchanan’s latest offering in the small but persistent historical subfield of World War II revisionism, Adam Kirsch noted the “delicious irony” that a reactionary white supremacist would launch an attack on Churchill and Roosevelt in the same publishing cycle that gave us Nicholson Baker’s pacifist polemic Human Smoke:
When they look back to the 1930s, Mr. Baker’s role models are the Quakers and pacifists who believed it was better to lie down for Hitler than take up arms to fight him; Mr. Buchanan’s are the isolationists who believed that Nazi Germany was a necessary bulwark against the real menace, godless communism.
Travel far enough down the political spectrum and you’ll eventually meet your soulmate coming from the opposite direction. Who knows? Buchanan and Nicholson might also share in nostalgia for the gold standard, whispers about the Trilateral Commission, and soppy-stern tributes to the legacy of Charles Lindbergh. We have here the brain trust of a new Unpopular Front.
One has already read about the swelling favor movement-conservatives feel for Barack Obama, and everyday it seems as if another tranche of Hillary Clinton supporters say it doesn’t matter what the old girl tells them, they’re casting a “protest” vote for McCain come November.
Yet if ever there were a marriage of convenience waiting to be licensed, it is between the two long shots with a shared talent for keeping their names in the headlines and their slavish votaries hoping against hope.
Michael Weiss is a New York-based writer. His blog is Snarksmith.
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27 Comments
1. seeker:I havea problem with the use of Far Left. Why not call a spade a spade.
Use communist or socialist instead.
Definitely, Kucinich is a Communist.
Jun 17, 2008 - 2:15 am 2. Kim Zigfeld:If we could only get Ross Perot
http://perotcharts.com/
and Pat Buchanan
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/patrick-j-buchanan%e2%80%94pseudo-historian-very-real-dissimulator/
in there somehow too (president, vice president, secretary of state, secretary of defense)! Then, oh then, what a paradise America would be!
Jun 17, 2008 - 3:42 am 3. Alberto Gonzalez:Kim Zigfield forgot the savior of our planet, the one and only, the inventor of the internet Mr. Al Gore himself.
Jun 17, 2008 - 5:12 am 4. Bennett:Perhaps we could nominate him Secretary General of the United Nations or perhaps Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, I don’t know something important.
Alberto Gonzalez
Miranda, Asturias, Spain
Ron Paul is the man. Nither Obama or McCain can understand that a big part of the solution to America’s financial crisis is to simply quit maintaining our empire all over the world, as well as to get rid of the private Federal Reserve system that inflates our currency to worthless values and maintains a system of debt that enslaves all of us.
Jun 17, 2008 - 5:16 am 5. Moonage:This idea sounds good on paper, but is way too late. Nader/McKinney has already positioned themselves in the race and I would imagine has already locked up their base.
Jun 17, 2008 - 5:47 am 6. MikeT:All snark, no substance, but what can you expect from a “snarksmith?”
Jun 17, 2008 - 6:31 am 7. AJ:Two enemies of America and freedom. Yes, a dream ticket for evil. Throw in al-Gore and George Soros—-then send all four to Syria or Iran and see how much love they get.
Jun 17, 2008 - 8:00 am 8. AJ:“All snark, no substance, but what can you expect from a “snarksmith?””
Looking at your blog, Mike, it’s amazing you have the audacity to castigate anyone.
Jun 17, 2008 - 8:01 am 9. Saltherring:YES! Truly a dream ticket for the kooks on both fringes. Perhaps Paul and Kucinich will collaborate to form the “Blue Diamond” or “Planters” Party, where one must be a certifiable “nut” to join.
Jun 17, 2008 - 8:17 am 10. Roark:They’re official bumper sticker; “start seeing ufo’s”
Jun 17, 2008 - 8:56 am 11. Sandra M:I have long dreamt of a Kucinich - Ron Paul debate.
We would all have to pee beforehand lest hilarity bring on an accident.
Jun 17, 2008 - 8:58 am 12. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich: The Real Dream Team | Construction Materials:[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptForget McCain and Lieberman. This would be the ultimate bipartisan match. [...]
Jun 17, 2008 - 9:37 am 13. MikeT:Then look a little bit harder.
At least I know the difference between an isolationist like Buchanan and a non-interventionist like Paul. That’s more than can be said about the writer of this post.
Jun 17, 2008 - 10:03 am 14. Cletus:Ron Paul and Kucinich aren’t BiPartisan, they are NONpartisan, as in NOBODY FROM EITHER SIDE WOULD VOTE FROM THEM. They get the bats*** crazies, and that is it
Jun 17, 2008 - 10:19 am 15. Pax:This is one of the dumbest things I have ever read.
Ron Paul is a libertarian. Kucinich is a socialist. They may agree on some issues, but on the FUNDAMENTAL issue of economics and the proper size of government they are POLAR OPPOSITES. Both against NAFTA? Technically yes, but Paul is pro-free-trade and Kucinich is against.
If you bothered to do basic research into their positions you wouldn’t have come off looking like an ignorant ass, Mr. Weiss.
Jun 17, 2008 - 11:06 am 16. jerry:Pax:
you miss the point Paul and Kucinich are merely the national and the socialist wings of the new National Socialist Party. They both seem to attract the most virulent anti-semites in America.
Jun 17, 2008 - 1:08 pm 17. Roderick Reilly:What’s with Cleveland anyway? Not only do they keep re-electing the tiny man from Vega, but they once made him their Mayor. Is it something wafting off of the Cuyahoga? Whatever it is, Drew Carey is immune to it.
Kucinich reminds me of a ventriloquist dummy (he’s the right size), except no one can stick a hand up his ass because his head’s already there.
Jun 17, 2008 - 2:44 pm 18. ic:the ultimate bipartisan match
Do you mean bipolar?
Jun 17, 2008 - 11:16 pm 19. deguello:The real dream team would consit of Thomas Jefferson and Mikhail Kalshnikov.If voting worked,it would be illegal.
Jun 18, 2008 - 9:13 am 20. deguello:The ultimate dream team at this sad point in our national history,when bipartisan shills of the globalist plutocracy are turning the US into Mexico lite,would be Thomas Jefferson and Mikhail Kalashnikov.If voting worked it would be ilegal.
Jun 18, 2008 - 9:18 am 21. DrKrbyLuv:Ron Paul is a far better candidate than either the eco-neocon McCain or Obama. Trouble is that neoconservatives are too dumb to notice.
The funny thing is that your candidate McCain, was bought by George Soros back in 2001. Yea, the same George Soros that neoconservatives like to hate. Well, consider yourself duped. Soros bought McCain in order to get the campaign reform he had been seeking for 10 years. And, McCain was paid to keep our borders open, ala EU but with Mexico-US-Canada.
You truly deserve Obama.
Jun 18, 2008 - 12:35 pm 22. deguello:Thegood doctor is right;Mcain is the perfect globalist dupe: an open borders man with plausibility as a patriot,and a reformer, who would censor free speech for the benefit of globalist plutocrat, like Soros. With such 2 candidates the plutocracy can’t loose.See my previous post.
Jun 18, 2008 - 3:18 pm 23. Ross Reeves:AG=E.Holder; DCI=Val Plame; SECCOM=Maxine Waters; SECDEF=Cindy Sheehan; SECENERGY=Algore; VETAFFAIRS= John (In Cold Blood)Murtha; HUD=Jimmy Carter; HHS=R. Wyden; SECTREAS=G. Soros; SECAG=a new Congressman every day (rotating); OMB=Ted Stevens; SECEDUC=”Brownie” (it’s not screwed up enough yet);HOMELAND SECURITY: vacant
Jun 19, 2008 - 8:15 am 24. deguello:Sounds either like the editorial board of the NY Times, or the inmates of a school for the criminally insane.
Jun 19, 2008 - 10:33 am 25. seeker:In the end, this article is just a parody.
Kucinich is a hardcore socialist. He has just been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, the dominant “democratic” third party in Chicago, Illinois (birth of Communism) for another term.
Bush impeachment is a way to go for Kucinich… his main agenda as Socialist.
Jun 19, 2008 - 9:00 pm 26. seeker:Bennett is kidding.
Imperialism is an Anti-American word often used in Third World countries.
Funny, it is coming from an American who is supposed to learn that terrorism points to America which originated from the word “Imperialism” now imbedded in the psychological makeup in other countries, especially the Arabs.
If you want peace, as you are propagator of appeasement, the only way to go is to clarify that your so-called “Imperialism” is not really true…
America just doesn’t want Isolationism.
Jun 19, 2008 - 9:05 pm 27. dbooth:I need to send this to my Kucinich-supporting cousin. Jerry hit the nail on the head: Paul-Kucinich … the nationalist and socialist wings of the new National Socialist Party. Non-interventionists/isolationists not quite ready to take their show on the road, but all too willing to throw a few million Jews to the Islamofacist wolves while cleaning house at home.
Jun 21, 2008 - 1:09 am