One of the few concrete functions of the Vice President once elected, is to serve as a more extreme alternative to the political positions of the President. That way, nobody opposed to the President's platform can assassinate the President in the hopes of killing that platform, because it will only be replaced with a worse version.

This is not the case in an across-the-aisle Presidency. There are lots of Paul supporters who would like to see Sanders dead, and a whole bunch of them have guns and are fond of out-of-the-box thinking about their liberty. I spent a few months participating in online communities associated with Ron Paul back in 2007; It was enlightening, though it left me feeling a little soiled.