Top Brit-blogger Iain Dale asks Ten Questions about the US election:
10. How long before Mitt Romney’s money runs out?9. What circumstances would encourage Michael Bloomberg to run as an Independent?8. Who will Al Gore endorse and when?7. How long will Huckabee’s ego hold?6. When and if should Bill Clinton be put out on the stump again?5. What will John McCain have to promise to gain Huckabee’s endorsement?4. How negative is Romney prepared to go?3. How important will the VP choice be for each candidate?2. Obama hasn’t yet made a gaffe – how bad would it be for him if he made a big one?1. Is Osama bin Laden the biggest known unknown in this election – i.e. how would a new terror attack affect the election?
In order:
10. Doesn’t matter. You can stick a fork in Romney now. He’s done.
9. Ego alone. A Bloomberg run might be better for the GOP however.
8. Obama if he chooses to. I suspect he won’t. Perm any reasons from these: he dislikes Hillary, he remembers how his endorsement of Howard Dean worked out, he doesn’t want to risk tarnishing his super-famous status, he’s just not that interested…
7. Until JohnMcCain – whom Huck calls an “honourable man” (no Caesar reference implied) – asks him to be his Veep.
6. He shouldn’t.
5. The Vice-Presidency.
4. Very. But it’s too late now.
3. Not very. More important for Obama than Hillary however.
2. Bad but not as bad as a gaffe from any other candidate. The media wants this to run and run. And, if pushed, also wants Obama to win.
1. Best for McCain and Hillary. Bad for America and, by extension, the rest of us.
UPDATE: Of course, it is entirely possible that McCain might feel unable to select Huckabee for fear of what this might do to parts of the grass-roots and much of the Republican intelligentsia. Then again McCain has many more nice things to say about Huck than Romney in his speech this evening. His remarks about Romney are markedly less enthusiastic than the flowers he sent Huckabee. Only tepid applause for his let’s-be-nice-to-Mitt bit too.
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