What To Watch For In McCain's VP Pick

GOP propagandist and gossip columnist, Robert Novak, is reporting that McCain is going to announce his choice of a running mate this week to get the media's attention off Obama's triumphal trip to the Middle East and Europe (and to change the topic away from McCain's problems with spiraling gas prices, more corrupt lobbyists on the Double Talk Express, the appearance that he is the odd man out in the Iraq debate, and his insistence that Czechoslovakia act as a bulwark against the aggressive nature of the Ottoman Empire, especially on the Iraq-Pakistan border, which of course, only exists in the fevered imaginations of McCain, Lieberman and little Miss Lindsey Graham).

Most GOP insiders, Novak included, are touting predatory corporate exec Mitt Romney, a choice that McCain finds personally galling. He once said he couldn't stand being in the same room as Romney. But McCain is under heavy pressure from Bush and Rove-- who are raising all the Republican bucks this year (which goes to the NRC, not the McCain campaign)-- to pick Romney. They're afraid that McCain looks too old, too ugly and too unlikely to finish a term. They also point out that McCain hurt himself, perhaps fatally, when he admitted several times knowing nothing about economics, which also came off as sounding like he also doesn't care about economics and that he would just hire good people to take care of that. Last week, his "good people" (Texas reactionary Phil Gramm) proved to be such a disastrous lightning rod that McCain was forced to boot him off the Double Talk Express.

Romney, for all his personal faults, is a proven fundraiser-- at least among wealthy Mormons-- and has the image of knowing something about business and economics... even if, like Gramm, it's all the wrong stuff. Some of Romney's comments about McCain still rankle, like when he claimed McCain would set a "liberal Democrat course as president,” and when he reminded audiences that McCain "has said time and again that he doesn’t understand the economy." McCain never tired of calling Romney a lightweight flip-flopper who stands for nothing but opportunism and has no core principles.

But Rove is just telling McCain to suck it up and accept the inevitable-- that if he wants the money Bush is raising for him, he picks Romney, no matter what he thinks of him personally. McCain has already tossed out so much of what he supposedly "stands for," that another flip-flop will hardly be noticed. Of course, this could be a problem with evangelical bigots and agents of intolerance who consider Romney a member of a satanic cult. Perhaps this is why Dobson popped out of his hole yesterday offering to endorse McCain if he picks a "good" running mate.

One problem that no one likes addressing is that Romney, even if he could deliver Michigan to the Republicans, just plain makes McCain look even worse than he already is-- and that's bad:




UPDATE: FALSE ALARM-- McCAIN'S LOBBYISTS, IN DESPERATION, LIED TO NOVAK

Novak now claims he was had by one of the "senior" lobbyists driving the Double Talk Express. He was told to go with the story about McCain announcing his VP choice so that McCain could get some headlines away from Obama's very successful trip to Afghanistan and Iraq. But they were using Novak as a goat. He's not happy, although he shouldn't be surprised.