http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9AOYacPmBw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9AOYacPmBw

Meg Whitman should be the number one choice. She would be great for the economy and it would be foolish not to nominate a woman at this point.

Palin would be great but isn’t ready.

Pawlenty is just another white guy. Furthermore, he has too much gaffe potential.

Lieberman would have been great, pulling in tons of independent votes, but unfortunately the “base” won’t go for it. I am strongly pro-life, but I would love to have Lieberman. He’s a good guy. This isn’t some nutty liberal we are talking about.

Mitt Romney would be a huge mistake. Boring white guy that has Biden-style quotes that could be used against McCain.

Whitman is the home run at this point.

While Mitt Romney said things critical of McCain and Joe Biden said things critical of Obama, that’s basically where the comparisons end.

Biden said that Obama wasn’t experienced enough to be president. That’s clearly a core competency that McCain can capitalize on. On the other hand, Romney criticized McCain for being too liberal and not having executive experience. Not exactly fertile ground for Obama to say he has the upper hand.

The only name on McCain’s purported short list that I like almost as much as Mitt Romney is U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia. Cantor’s biggest drawback is that he doesn’t bring any executive experience to the table.

I also like Govs. Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford; Sens. Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint; and U.S. Reps. Mike Pence, Jeb Hensarling, Marsha Blackburn, and Paul Ryan – but I haven’t heard that any of them are being seriously considered.

The rest would be complete duds.

Hopefully big government Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, liberal Republican former Gov. Tom Ridge, and Independent Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman will not be on the ticket come Aug. 29.

needs to realize is that as badly as Bush mismanaged the economy and alienated voters, we are lucky to have a shot at this at all. Bush doesn’t even deserve to be called a conservative after the way he ran up the national debt by about 4 trillion dollars.

Furthermore, this isn’t the race for the base to threaten sitting out because they think the platform is squishy. Would you rather have a moderate like Lieberman with McCain and win the race, or would you rather risk handing our entire government over to Obama, Pelosi, and Reid?

If the latter happens, the pro-lifers can kiss every legal advancement they’ve made over the last several decades goodbye.

a terrible pick like Biden–a gaffe-producing Washington insider that highlights his weaknesses and destroys his message of “change–we have a huge opportunity to capitalize here by nominating someone like Meg Whitman who isn’t some ho-hum Washington political retread.

There is a huge opportunity to seize independent voters and the media’s attention here.

If we just nominate Pawlenty or Romney and the nation’s collective response will be “meh.”

Joe Lieberman would be a terrific Secretary of State, I just hope that Gov. Jodi Rell would not appoint herself to Lieberman’s senate seat. Honestly, I believe Chris Shays would be a better senator than Gov. Rell – and I am no fan of Shays.

Why Not Jesse “The Body” Ventura?

OK, he may be all wrong on the issues and a total wild man, but just think about how different the VP debate would be. He comes into the hall preceded by good looking women in hot pants holding up message cards, maybe wearing a sequiny costume, and proceeds to body slam Biden through the podium. Politics would never be the same.

Pawlenty, by contrast, is kind of boring.

I have to reply to this comment from your post: “Take out the people like the President, Vice President, Romney, and Jindal that they had to put up there and you aren’t left with much of a conservative speaker line up”

I’m a staunch fiscal conservative and have been appalled by the out of control government spending by Bush and the “republican” congress he had for a majority of his term. With the exception of the tax cuts, I have seen very very little in the way of fiscal responsibility from Bush or leaders of congress from either party.

I also have problems calling people like Mitt Romney a conservative as well. I heard him speak at the West Virginia GOP Convention and I think he’ll tell you what you want to hear and then go to the next group and flip flop on what he just said if they want to hear the opposite position.

You also have Fred Thompson, Sam Brownback, Huckabee (Brownback and Huckabee should make the SoCons happy) and Sarah Palin. And at least NPR thinks Pawlenty is pretty far right. But then, of course, you have Lieberman and Ridge in there to offset it.

All in all, a typical McCain event – something to piss off just about everyone.

Erick Erickson wrote:

Die hard fiscal cons and social cons are both privately grumbling about the line up of speakers. One person told me, “That’s a lot of squishiness on the platform. Take out the people like the President, Vice President, Romney, and Jindal that they had to put up there and you aren’t left with much of a conservative speaker line up.”

So who are the nominees to avoid creeping squishyism?

John Boehner?

John Kasich is a no-brainer.

1.He’s relatively young at 56.
2.He’s conservative
3.He’s from Ohio and Pennsylvania – he plays well there and throughout the country.
4.He’s a great debater – I think he would fare much better against Joe Biden than any of the other oft-mentioned veep possibilities
5.He was the person who brought us balanced budgets in the 1990s after the GOP take over while actually working with Clinton.
6.He can actually make the case that he came to DC and changed it
7.No taint of scandal from the last few GOP years – he was long gone and back in Ohio
8.He’s not going to make a fool of himself
9.He would fire up the base like no other selection
10.He’s ready to lead
11.And in ’12 or ’16, he’ll be the presumed candidate, and one in the mold of our hero – Ronald Reagan

Come on Big Mac. Kasich’s the clear choice.

If there were an obvious woman choice, I think that would be the way to go. I just don’t know enough about the very green Palin and Hutchinson may be a little too old and too much of an insider (think a female McCain).

Pawlenty seems good, but a little drone. I dont think he would be good on the stump and would get crushed by Biden

Romney can help in MI, CO an NV and has a built in organization and ground game. The closer this race gets, the more pivotal that looks to me.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/25/MNDR12HM1O.DTL

Romney would be as much an attack dog as Biden, and he would give Biden a run for his money in the VP debate. He has executive experience as governor, something that neither of the dems have. Also, Romney has private business sector experience; again, something neither of the dems have. And Romney’s turnaround of the 2002 Olympics dovetails nicely with the recent games in China. Don’t count him out yet, Erick.

I would think its one of those three more than likely.