Palin-Beck is NOT a "conservative dream ticket"

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We're not sure who first came up with the cockamamie idea of a Palin Beck ticket, but Suzanne Eovaldi is simply the latest to advance it. It is no dream ticket for conservatives, unless the dream is the nightmare of Barack Obama and his band of leftist radicals having eight years to drive America into the ground instead of four.

First of all, Glenn Beck will be the first to tell you that he isn't a conservative. He's more libertarian than conservative, and though we're mostly just fine with libertarians, a conservative dream ticket is not necessarily the same as a conservative/libertarian dream ticket. Second, were Sarah Palin to campaign for the White House with a libertarian running mate, it would have to be one with some governmental experience. Glenn Beck may be a great talk show host, and he could even plausibly contribute some occasional advice to a president, but he has no government experience.

Remember how the Democrats and the their trained media canines raked Sarah Palin over the coals in the 2008 campaign for her supposed lack of experience? They got away with it too, even though she had more executive experience than Obama, Biden and McCain did among them. Just imagine what they would do to Beck in 2012.

If she does throw her cap into the ring for a presidential race, Sarah Palin will need a running mate with legislative experience. Even in the unlikely event that the Republicans were to take back control of both houses of Congress in 2010, a President Palin would face tough odds in getting the Democrats' legislative agenda undone and one of her own enacted. Assuming, just for the sake of argument that a Palin/Beck ticket managed the impossible and got elected, how persuasive doesn't anyone think Glenn Beck would be with Senators and Congresspersons? It would be such a tough row to hoe that it would be a back breaker.

But getting elected is an even harder part of the political equation. There's a reason why Republicans usually try to balance their presidential tickets. Democrats don't have to worry about this. Obama and Biden were two of the three most liberal members of the Senate and still managed to get elected because the media rarely made mention of that fact. But if the GOP fielded a ticket composed of two conservatives, the media would make sure to work the words "right" and "wing" into every story they cranked out on the presidential campaign in an effort to scare the voters.

Ronald Reagan, the only true conservative to win the White House in the modern era, won convincingly in 1980, not just because Jimmy Carter was such a miserable failure, but also due to the fact that he had the moderate George H.W. Bush as his running mate. The elder Bush served as a perfect foil to the media attempt to define Reagan as a crazy right winger because Republicans could point to Bush and say, "Nonsense. Look, his first decision was to select a moderate running mate."

For this reason, should Sarah Palin seek to win the presidency, she would probably choose a more moderate running mate than herself or a libertarian Republican. If she does not select a moderate, she will pick a non-threatening conservative or a libertarian with House or Senate credentials. As unpopular as our Congresscritters are with the general public right now, the people know that there are some on Capitol Hill who have fought the good fight. There's no shortage of good examples to cite. Both of Oklahoma's U.S. Senators -- James Inhofe and Dr. Tom Coburn -- come to mind, as do Indiana Congressman Mike Pence and Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake. As a member of the House Liberty Caucus, Flake, who is considered one of the most libertarian members of the House, would be of great help to Sarah Palin in reuniting the conservative and libertarian factions of the coalition which carried Ronald Reagan to two lopsided victories.

Being an outsider has a great appeal to voters, especially in a time like the present when they are disgusted with Washington. But once elected, outsiders can have trouble getting an agenda through the Congress. Though he had strong Democrat majorities in the the 95th and 96th Congresses, Jimmy Carter sent many bills there to die. Granted, much of it was his own fault, but it behooves a president to have not only a legislative director who knows the way around Capitol Hill, but a vice president who does also.

If we're going to speculate, let us at least confine our speculation to the realm of possibility. A ticket with Glenn Beck on it does not exist within that realm.

- JP