It’s got to be hard to be John McCain. Your opponent raises as much in one month as you do in three. You’ve managed to take the single constant partisan issue advantage you have, national security, and squander it away because of an ill-conceived war. You appear to know less about your platform than Michelle Malkin does about controlling her facial expressions. You can look forward to depending on the RNC, a well-funded but largely clueless organization with several dozen races to lose, for a significant portion of your crunch-time support.
And now, you’re probably going to have to choose a VP whom your base either regards as a cultist or who is, in fact, batshit crazy and an even worse version of every bad thing Barack Obama is supposed to embody.
McCain’s camp is saying they won’t choose this week which, looking at the calendar leaves…next week. Obama’s almost certain to announce on or near his birthday (Monday, August 4th), given that, at the very least, they’ll need time to print out the Obama/[Blank] merchandise. (I’m still pushing for Obama/Barkley.) If McCain waits until after, they leave a couple of days in a shortened week for their announcement to duel with Obama’s, And I guarantee you Obama’s pick will be less controversial than McCain’s, short of choosing City Councilman Lourdes O’Butsecks (D-LA).
No More Mister Nice Blog says it’s Jindal, which really does answer the question of what would happen if John McCain were a Democratic plant in the Republican Party.
The Jed Report calls it an act of desperation, which I think is a misread of the situation. McCain only has two chunks of time to announce - the two weeks prior to the Olympics and the Democratic convention. It’s not so much that he’s got to do something now to take the focus off of Obama, it’s that Obama knows that McCain’s got to do something now and smartly decided to put the focus on himself.
Whiskey Fire confirms, yet again, that K. Lo. is the least qualified person who has ever managed to put a subject and verb together to form what is, at its most theoretical level, a sentence.
Redstate says it’s Romney, which really does answer the question of what would happen if Dan Quayle was Reggie rather than Jughead. Hugh Hewitt has started off the internet tradition (of which I am aware) of writing ploddingly predictable speeches for an event over which he has no control.
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Why6 would Mr McCain announce his choice before Mr Obama does? The Republican National Convention occurs after the Democrats’, so Mr McCain has the potential advantage of waiting to see who will be running with Mr Obama. If Mr Obama chooses a white male running mate, Mr McCain might wish to choose someone like Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, to try to pick up some of the supporters of Hillary Clinton who are still mad about the primary results.
Governor Jindal doesn’t help Mr McCain. With Mr Obama the Democratic nominee, Mr Jindal isn’t going to bring the GOP any more votes from blacks than Mr McCain would receive without him on the ticket, and Mr Jindal simply doesn’t have that much time in office.
The Philadelphia Inquirer had a chart a few weeks ago, which noted that John Edwards in 2004 was the runningmate on whom we got the most advance notice, and that was just twenty days. In most cases, we received less than a week’s advance notification, and several running mates, from both parties, were not announced until the conventions themselves.