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Joementum

James Forsyth

Monday, 25th August 2008

The conventional wisdom early last week was that when it came down to picking a running mate, McCain was down to three names Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney and Joe Lieberman. But over the last few days, the attractiveness of both Pawlenty and Romney to the ticket have decreased.

The selection of Joe Biden as Obama’s running mate hurts Pawlenty’s chances—he is a Mid-Western governor with little knowledge of foreign affairs and there are feats that Biden could take him to the woodshed on foreign policy during the VP debate. While McCain’s houses flub hurt Romney. A McCain-Romney ticket would be a ticket of multi-millionaires with multiple houses, hardly a recipe for success in tough economic times.

This brings us back to the possibility of McCain-Lieberman. Lieberman’s pro-choice views and generally liberal attitudes to domestic policy would risk undoing all the work that the McCain campaign has done to unify the right of the party behind McCain. But it would make it far more difficult for Democrats to paint McCain as either a Bush clone or as a generic Republican. The argument being made for Lieberman is the one Bill Kristol makes in the New York Times today: yes social conservatives wouldn’t like McCain-Lieberman but they’d dislike Obama-Biden more.

The other thing that seems to be happening on the McCain VP pick is more wild cards are being floated. General Petraeus and Colin Powell have both been mentioned in the media in recent days, Meg Whitman’s stock is rising and I still wouldn’t rule Bobby Jindall out entirely.

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Ted

August 25th, 2008 6:42pm

Despite the Dems and the allied main stream media’s desperation to see Romney as McCain’s Veep, Mitt is clearly out, with (1) Obama doubling down on the class warfare theme (McCain’s 7 houses) and (2) McCain doubling down with ads showing the hypocrisy of Biden attacking Obama in the primaries — Romney did way more than that contra McCain.

This leaves only Govs Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty. Pro-abortion Ridge and Dem-Lieberman were never real considerations, despite relentless media goading. Pawlenty’s lackluster TV performances, coupled with Palin pizzazz, the primacy of oil drilling and the ticked off women/Hillary voters, does now portend a McCain/Palin checkmate on the Dems. This is so albeit the Dems and liberal media dare not mention Palin’s name, that is, everyone but…..

And if there’s any question as to Palin being uniquely positioned and able to more than nullify Biden in debate, see the excellent discussion at palinforvp.blogspot.com

Team McCain, well done!!!

TGF UKIP

August 25th, 2008 7:00pm

With Obama, Biden and McCain himself too, having performed more than their share of flip flops, a straight shooter should be an essential pre-requisite for McCain's VP. This would certainly rule out Romney as would the fact that the Obama campaign could run parallel ads but featuring Romney ripping into McCain in the primaries.

Lieberman, though, is far too risky. With the enthusiasm and momentum on the side of the Democrats, McCain needs to maximize the Republican vote. Social conservatives may not vote for Obama-Biden but it would be just as damaging for McCain if they stayed home. Rove would rightly call him crazy if he went for Lieberman. BTW, Kristol comes up with some funny notions.

I note in your above list of runners, James, Fred Smith doesn't feature so I'm assuming I can kiss my bet goodbye.

Trouble is with Old John you never know what's coming next. I just hope it's not too weird or maverick