Romney for VP?

(March 12, 2008) – Like I was sayin… if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  I saw articles this morning indicating that Romney was open to being on a McCain Romney ticket.

In an interview yesterday, Romney indicated that he would do anything to help McCain become president including running as the VP.

I believe this would help and hurt McCain.  Romney would add the conservative values item to the ticket as well as his speaking/debating skills.  He has also done the health-care thing in his state without having the government run it.

Negatives would the “guy most likely to lay you off” tag that dems will try to hang on him.  There will also be attempts to bring up the Mormon thing.

I would also like to see McCain wait until there is a dem candidate.  Depending upon the winner in that contest, the obvious choices could change.  I would imagine that if Obama wins, there will be a push to add an African American to the ticket and likewise a woman if Hillary wins.

I don’t think that adding an African American will help much as they will be most likely branded as not “black” enough since they would be a republican.  But, it would take some of the vote of people who would vote for Obama just because he is African American (not that he doesn’t deserve their votes, just that some people in both parties don’t look too deep when selecting a candidate to vote for).

In any case, McCain will need to add somebody that would help fire up the conservative base who might otherwise sit this one out.  It should be an interesting 6 months.

Obama says “No thank you”

(March 11, 2008) – Like I was sayin… sometimes you can trick them, other times you can’t.

Several times over the weekend I saw stories about Hillary Clinton hinting at having Obama be the VP should she become the nominee.  I thought this was rather odd being that she is behind in both the popular vote and in the delegate count.

I got a kick out of Obama’s response since I don’t normally agree with him on anything.  Hillary seemed to have served up a slow ball that Obama knocked out of the park.  He even asked “If I am not ready, how is it that you think I would be such a great VP?”.

Today in the WSJ I read an article that Hillary’s campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson responded to the that question.  He basically said that Obama isn’t ready to be president yet, but it is a long time between now and the convention.  Are they going to keep pitching the Obama campaign slow balls?  What they are saying is basically he isn’t ready to be president yet, but he could be by November if he agrees to be the VP.  I don’t have the ability to read the future, but I bet I know what the next few Obama campaign adds are going to say.

 I believe that the Clinton campaign was trying to reach out to those who are undecided by indicating that if you can’t make up your mind, vote for Clinton and you get both.  It will be interesting to see how they try to come back from this blunder.  She may have inadvertently pushed some independents to look more closely at McCain.