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Mitt’s VeePee

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For months now, there has been low-level speculation about Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA-5) being selected to be Mitt Romey’s VP (e.g. here).

It makes sense in that it doesn’t defy the laws of physics or anything (well…not that the laws of physics would hold back Republicans from attempting something). Rep. McMorris Rogers is over 35. She is the highest ranking Republican woman in the House. It’s not like she only served 1/2 a term as Governor in some low-population state, or anything. And, McMorris Rodgers did have one of the earliest Republican VP Nominee Intrade pages.

Alas, these days, she’s a Republican VP Nominee penny stock.

Still…even if it’s a long shot, I predict Mittens will pick Cathy for VP. What do I have to lose? If he picks her, I’ll look like a genius. And if not, my prediction will be lost in a sea of unsuccessful VP predictions from the chattering classes.

These days political pundit seem all hyped-up over Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI-1). I guess it makes sense….VPRyan

For Republicans, having an actor in the White House is political comfort food.

Comments

  2. 2

    @1,
    Sure they do.
    Tell us, you with the funny name, what are the qualifications for VP?

  3. 3

    You know what, no matter who Slick Willard chooses, it will be a disaster.

    Why? When the selected is doing the round robin with the talking heads s/he will be asked if s/he provided tax returns to Slick Willard.

  4. 4

    I don’t see Romney nominating McMorris-Rogers except if he feels he needs a woman on the ticket. If that’s the primary criteria, I expect he’d go with the Gov. of S. Carolina – she hits both the woman and minority buttons. But the Sihk heritage might be problematic for the Tea Party, as some of their comments after the recent shooting are any indication (they think Sihks are Muslims, and all Muslims are… well, you know).

    But I don’t think Romney will go with a woman this year, even as badly as he needs one on the ticket. McCain poisoned that well with his Palin nomination. If Romney were to try it again, the news media would do endless “compare and contrast” pieces, which would only remind people for the next several months what a screw up the Palin nomination turned out to be.

  5. 5

    @4,

    Actually Sarah Palin might be the best VP pick for Mittens. All the right wing loves her, and after all, it wasn’t her that lost the election. The only real problem she had was when that damn Katie Couric asked all those hard questions of her.

  6. 6

    All things considered, I really don’t see a potential V.P. candidate which helps Romney in the general election. The women’s and minority votes have already been decided, he’s not going to make up much ground by selecting a VP from those ranks. He could go hard to the right (Ryan), but that just raises the tax and health-care issues which are already hurting Romney, energizing his base isn’t going to make up for those losses. That leaves him with the non-descript white guy with business and some governmental service on his resume – at which point it’s kind of a mirror image of himself.

    The most he can hope for is to pick somebody who won’t do any more damage to his campaign.

  7. 7

    “Tell us, you with the funny name, what are the qualifications for VP?”

    I think the only thing you have to do to be VP is to be able to eat with a knife and fork, not drool too much, and at least show up whenever and wherever the prez sez to show up. That wold explain why Kennedy chose that imbecile LBJ as his vice-prez.

  8. 8

    LBJ

    in his first months as president, Lyndon Johnson helped pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a major education bill, a new tax law, an anti-poverty program, and a food-stamp plan. he pressed Congress to pass his “Great Society” program. under its terms, every American could look forward to a good education, a comfortable life, and an old age without worry.

    however, Johnson plunged the nation deeper and deeper into the Vietnam War. by the time he left office in 1969, close to half a million U.S. troops were in Vietnam, and angry war protestors were marching on Washington D.C. with bitter chants directed at LBJ.

    I can see why you don’t like him. He was a flaming socialist by the standards of today’s conservatives.

  10. 10

    I think Ryan would help with his base. It would also help with those people who vote on the criteria of how good looking the candidate is.
    But Ryan is so extreme, his record would be used against him in the general. The conservative base loves his ideas, every else, not so much.

  11. 11

    @8
    Hell Nixon is a Socialist by the standards of recent Democratic Presidents and members of Congress.

    Sadly I find myself pining for the days of ol’ tricky Dick.

  12. 12

    @10
    Mittens should go for broke and find the craziest and furthest to the right nut he can. Someone who makes either Bachmann or Ryan look sane and moderate by comparison.

  13. 13

    @8 LBJ managed to get most everything he wanted by ruthlessly employing every means of political blackmail then available to a Chief Executive with lots of friends (and even more people in his debt) on The Hill. One of his principal means of persuasion was to threaten to withold all highway subsidies from any state government that even whispered its intention not to cooperate. As a result, the rules were changed over the years to deprive any President of the legal authority to do those things.

  14. 14

    re 11: “Sadly I find myself pining for the days of ol’ tricky Dick.”

    Yes. At least you could safely gauge the truth of his statement by assuming it was the exact opposite of what he’d just said.

    ” HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA…. BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.”
    Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

  16. 16

    @7 “I think the only thing you have to do to be VP is to be able to eat with a knife and fork, not drool too much, and at least show up …”

    No, that was the qualification for the #1 spot when they chose Reagan.

  17. 17

    I think it’s Ryan, which is Romney’s idea of “shock and awe,” because Mittens needs some of that right now. But it’ll backfire because Ryan is too polarizing and will drive away moderates and anyone over age 65.

  18. 18

    @12

    Mittens should go for broke and find the craziest and furthest to the right nut he can.

    McMorris-Rogers it is!

  21. 21

    NBC: It’s Ryan

    “Three different sources close to the Romney campaign indicate to NBC News that Mitt Romney will announce House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate at tomorrow’s campaign event in Norfolk, VA.”

    http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_.....-ryan?lite

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: The desperate act of a dying campaign. It shows how fragile Romney’s grip on the GOP base is when he has to write off moderate swing voters to hold onto his own party.

  22. 22

    21 – We will witness an overflowing of man-love for Ryan from the klynical klown such as never been seen in the history of these comment threads.

    Ryan is the most despicable extremist in the House of Representatives.. Idiots like Bachmann, King, Gohmert are clowns.. Boehner is a laughable drunk and golf addict.

    Ryan is pure evil. I give Willard some credit. He chose someone who will make him look even more obnoxious and a disaster for this country than he already has so far.

    These two cannot be allowed to win the White House.

  23. 23

    Let us recap the genius of the Romney campaign for Friday the 10th of August.

    1. Goes on MSNBC and pleads to Chuck Todd for Team Obama to stop talking about business, or taxes, or things of that nature.

    2. Leaks to the media late on a Friday evening that the following Saturday morning at 8:45am when the only people who will be up watching TV are the millions of Soccer Football fans watching the Gold Medal match between Brazil & Mexico.

    3. Leaks to the media that Slick Willard delegated to his son the consolation call to those losing GOPVeePee finalists who it was not reported said “It’s Tagg, you’re not it.”

    When you are on the job Monday morning, what will people be talking about?

    a) The world record gold medal in the women’s 4×100

    b) The Closing Ceremony at the London 2012 Olympic Games

    c) The Gold Medal Soccer match between Brazil and Mexico

    d) How NBC f*cked up the coverage of the Soccer match and the Closing Ceremony at the London 2012 Olympic Games

    e) The sudden saturation of the Munsters remake on all the TV channels

  24. 24

    pudge over at (un)SP nails the strategic and tactical value of the Ryan pick:

    People tell me he’s a bad pick because of his budget and Medicare and so on, but I’ve thought they’re wrong. The leftists will hate him and try to paint him as a terrible person, sure, but the Romney campaign can say something like: “his budget was just a starting point for discussion, and the Democrats never came to the table; the main point is the goals he had, which were to reduce spending without harming the most vulnerable and free the market to make all Americans prosperous, and President Obama and the Democrats have failed at that. Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and a Republican Congress will work tirelessly to change that direction, starting with repealing Obama’s health insurance law, and ending with a balanced budget.”

    Is it just me? Or is that a trickle down, tax cut fairy dust incantation?

  25. 25

    At 8:45 EDT tomorrow morning, Paul Ryan will become the unofficial frontrunner for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.

  26. 26

    Paul Ryan’s Budget plan doesn’t balance the budget until 26 years from now. Clinton did it in less than 4 years. What morons we got here, a bunch of con artists coning the party of morons.

  27. 27

    @ 26

    Clinton’s starting point was a hole far, far, far more shallow than Romney/Ryan’s would be.

    Give Ryan the same starting point Clinton had and the budget Ryan would come up with would be far different.

    Ryan made a proposal more than a year ago. He put it out there in an environment in which the Democrats had no working budget of their own.

    Geithner’s comment seems a good summary of the Democrat budget and what they think of the opposition’s:

    “We don’t have a definitive solution… We just don’t like yours”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s29X6Wm0J1Q

  29. 29

    “We just don’t like yours”

    Indeed. Ryan’s plan sucks big time. Too bad for America that Republicans act like a bunch of goose-stepping fascists about everything with their unwillingness to compromise on absolutely anything.

    “the Democrats never came to the table”

    For some reason my Wingnut Decoder app keeps translating that one as, “Surrender to Zod!”

  31. 31

    Is This Romney’s ‘Goldwater Moment’?

    “So, how do strategists who are tasked with advising their candidates in House and Senate races view the Paul Ryan pick? Most Democrats we talked with were giddy about the pick … one Democratic strategist was … in disbelief calling it the ‘best pick possible for us.'”

    http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/po.....te-gopers/\

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: I get the impression what Democratic strategists are looking at now is the possibility this could blow wide open a number of congressional races where GOPers had a lock.

  32. 32

    Newsweek calls it “a stunning, terrible choice.”

    “By making it, Mitt Romney tells America that he is not his own man and hasn’t even the remotest fleeting desire to be his own man. He is owned by the right wing.”

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/a.....or-vp.html

    Bloomberg Business Week calls it a “dice roll” and a “huge gamble.”

    http://www.businessweek.com/ar.....get#r=read

    The Economist says, “Mr Romney has shored up his base. But conservatives already seemed rather motivated to boot Barack Obama from office. Will Mr Ryan cost him a share of the centre, just as Sarah Palin did John McCain? Mr Ryan is … associated with a specific form of conservatism that is all about insurgency, purity and Washington dysfunction.”

    http://www.economist.com/blogs...../paul-ryan

  33. 33

    Calling Ryan’s budget plan a “starting point for discussion” is just ridiculous. You don’t start serious negotiations by taking a position that is so irrational that it has no chance of suceeding.

    Add to that Ryan’s insistence that only a few very minor points of his plan are negotiable, in return for a the Democrats completely dismantiling the last fifty years worth of “safety net”.

    The Romney campaign is trying to introduce Ryan as someone “who knows how Washington works, and how to fix it”. If Ryan’s legislative record is any indication – not so much. Ryan has been in Congress for fourteen years, and he’s sponsored exacty two bills which have passed – one re-naming a local post office.

    Clearly, Ryan has no idea how to work in a legislative body and forge compromises. He’s little more than an ideological extremist and a political hack, compfortable working only within the extreme right-wing of his own party.

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