All week long, I've been quietly noticing a change in tone across the media waves and blogosphere. Suddenly, the bloggers aren't all calling Ron Paul nuts. The media is telling us that he is important in the race. Sarah Palin even mentioned that the party needs to embrace his support and listen to what he is saying, and she didn't get ostracized for it.
Also, the debates have been a little odd. Romney is the only candidate that Ron hasn't gone after. Ron was also the first to defend Romney against the Gingrich/Perry attacks on capitalism.
So, during a blog-n-brunch this morning, DH and I happened to read Smitty's piece, and an idea formed - one that made my eggs flip one more time. What if Rand Paul is on Romney's short list of vice presidential picks?
As always, here's the thing: Who can bring more voters?
Rand Paul is a staunch pro-life Christian conservative, with one amazingly beautful wife and several adorable kids. He can bring in Social Conservatives who might otherwise shy away from Romney's Mormon faith.
Of course, he's also the heir apparent to almost the entire libertarian wing of the GOP, which happens to be the only wing that's actually growing at the moment. (It also raises a whole lot of money.) And while part of that growth is in the youth who don't tend to vote as often as we would like, another sector they're capturing is the independents, and those are the votes that the GOP desperately (and I do mean desperately) needs to capture if they stand any chance at all in ousting Obama.
But here's the kicker: Rand Paul is also a legitimate TEA Party conservative. And not the pathetic GOP inflitrated, Gingrich supporting Judson "I want to make a million" Phillips type of TEA Partier, either. Nope, Rand brings the people who actually are sick to death of the spending and actually do want less government, not just more control of big government.
So I ask again - who can bring more voters? Who else can bring the unification ticket to fruition?
I hear the names Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio bounced around, and while it's true they could bring some female / Hispanic voters in, as well as the TEA Party, are there enough of them to swing the election?
Of course, there's a down side. It's entirely possible that such a move, if it were to happen, could actually be the GOP's way of getting pesky Rand Paul out of the Senate, opening the door for a more "agreeable" Senator to fill the chair.
But we know that Ron Paul is a historian, and as such we can assume he knows that the Vice President is also the President of the Senate. If memory serves me, up until Spiro Agnew left the Vice President had an office in the Senate and spent a good deal of his time actually driving the legislation that the executive branch was pushing for. Sarah Palin even mentioned that she wanted to return to that model if she was elected to that office. Is it possible that Romney would let Paul assume that role, which would be especially fulfilling if the GOP regains the Senate majority?
Practically speaking though, while I find it more than just a little amusing that they might be forced into it, would the same GOP that fought hard to keep Rand Paul out of the senate would, in less than two years, suddenly hand him the second highest position of power in the land? It seems like an awfully risky move for a party that's not known for adapting well to change.
There's certainly more than a few Ron Paul suporters who would never vote for Romney, period. But to be perfectly honest, I'm suddenly not sure that I'm among them. After all, the Bush/Rockefeller wing of the party was swept in on Reagan's coattails. Would it really be so wrong for us to return the favor?
