A couple of items on the McCain VP front. First of all, it looks like the announcement is being planned for a big Ohio rally:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans to celebrate his 72nd birthday on Aug. 29 by naming his running mate at a huge rally in the battleground state of Ohio, Republican sources said.
That’s a week from Friday, and the day after his rival, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, accepts the Democratic nomination at a 70,000-person spectacular in a Denver stadium.
The campaign has begun building a crowd of 10,000 for Dayton, Ohio, according to an organizer. McCain is scheduled to appear with his running mate at a large-scale event in Pennsylvania shortly thereafter.
Senior Republicans are in the dark about who he’ll name, although they say former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty are prime contenders after a trial balloon by McCain gave him very negative feedback about the idea of picking an abortion-rights running mate such as Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania and the first secretary of homeland security.
Sources close to McCain say he has wrestled with the choice, torn between a high-stakes, high-reward pick like Ridge or Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman — the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000 — or a safer and more conventional selection such as Romney or Pawlenty.
Friends say he has yet to make a final decision, and is not expected to do so until after Sen. Barack Obama announces his choice.
Then there's this bit of troubling news:
NR has learned that the McCain campaign has been calling key state GOP officials around the country the last couple of days and sounding them out about the consequences of a pro-choice VP pick. The campaign is asking about the reaction of conservative grass-roots activists to such a pick and whether a pro-choicer can be sold to them. This is an indication that the McCain campaign is serious about the possibility of a pro-choice VP nominee and that McCain leaving the door open to Tom Ridge last week may not have been merely a friendly nod to a longtime supporter. In this scenario, McCain's emphatic pro-life statements Saturday night and his pledge that he'll run a "pro-life administration" would have been partly an attempt to reassure conservatives in the event of a pro-choice pick. Here is NR's take today on why going with a pro-choicer would be a mistake for McCain.
Any goodwill McCain gained with evangelicals from the Saddleback Civil Forum would immediately evaporate if he chose a pro-choice VP. I don't care how much he likes Tom Ridge, Ridge would be a strategic disaster for McCain. He's not that much younger than McCain, he's not an exciting personality, he was the first Homeland Security Secretary and I can see the ads now with the different color warning system he designed, and he wears hearing aids. Nothing against people with hearing challenges, it's just that a 72-year old guy doesn't need a VP with hearing aids.
Let's hope this is just a dodge to give evangelicals a sense of tremendous relief when he chooses someone else.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment