After wining the First Quarter Republican Campaign Coffer Primary, Mitt Romney joined the other announced candidates for a “debate” at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library during which he read all the cue cards exactly as puppetmaster Vin Weber wrote them. The general consensus of the pundits is that Romney did a credible job making him a viable competitor to McCain with Giuliani faltering.
As Stephen Colbert lamented... “Come on, media, it’s your job to preemptively anoint someone so we all know who to give our money”, so let’s save the time for any more of these “debates” and award Romney the nomination.
I know that might seem hard for some to accept … after all in 2000 the message was that America needed a MBA in the White House (Romney was a classmate of GWB at Harvard’s Business School) and in 2004 the message was that you cannot vote for a Flip-Flopper from Massachusetts … but that was then, and this is now. The people who packaged Bush have a new and improved 2008 version … a State Governor with no foreign relations or Congressional experience is what the country needs … (this time, they’re sure they got the right guy… just trust ‘em.)
So what is the first order of business for President-to-be Romney --- selecting his Vice President.
In modern politics, the VP is someone who strengthens the ticket from a regional, religious, experience, and even once a gender difference.
So looking at Romney, what areas does he have to concern himself ?
His current State of residence is Massachusetts (and that is about as Blue as you can get on the Electoral College map) and his strongest backers are in Utah ( and that is about as Red as you can be). So, he need someone from a state that is an Electoral College toss-up. In the past two elections, Florida (27 Electoral Votes) and Ohio ( 20) were the key states. This year, it might not be two big states, but instead a combination of smaller states … toss-up states such as those interconnected in the middle of the country – Minnesota (10), Iowa (7), Wisconsin (10) and Missouri (11).
As has been pointed out, Romney is a Morman, so someone with the strong appeal from the evangelical movement would be a plus.
For experience, Romney’s only elected office was as a one-term Governor. So someone with experience in Washington would be beneficial.
So, the field is relatively small.
Jim DeMint, Senator from South Carolina and a strong backer of Romney would be a choice, but South Carolina’s 8 votes are most likely in the Republican column anyway. And with the Senate having 1/3 of its members up for election, there are a number of potential candidates (i.e. Norm Coleman) would have to weigh giving up their Senate seat for the possible VP slot. Also, the Senate is split so close between Republicans and Democrats that the Party may not want a sitting Senator to abdicate.
Choosing a sitting Governor may not help although Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty and Missouri’s Matt Blount are Republicans.
So, he might have to pick someone from the House of Representatives.
Now, with 201 Representatives to choose, he might have to find someone that fits his ideological beliefs.
To learn Romney's ideological beliefs, I note that he delivered Saturday’s graduation speech at Regent University, the school founded by televangelist Pat Robertson. During the address, he criticized people who choose not to get married because they enjoy the single life.
OK, so don’t allow me to stray into a tangent that some people may never get asked to get married; or may have a spouse killed in the Iraq conflict … simply stated, I guess being single is a problem for Romney. I suppose that I should not be surprised considering his family’s polygamy background including a great-grandfather who had five wives and at least one of his great-great grandfathers had 12. But wait a second, this couldn’t be Romney codeword equating “the single life” with those of alternative lifestyles.
So obviously, he needs someone with strong family values that will join him to lead America in a moral crusade to the promise land. Maybe someone that the alumni of Regent University would support (Marcus Bachmann earned a master's degree in counseling from Regent University).
That’s right, it may be time for Michele Bachman to bring Minnesota’s ten electoral votes to the Romney-Bachmann ticket.
What a perfect solution ... from a toss-up state, deeply religious, from Congress, and a woman ... what more could the Romney want?
That’s right only a heartbeat away from the presidency … Michele Bachmann.
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3 comments:
Michele Bachmann "earned" a law degree from Coburn 86?, an Oral Roberts U affiliate, the year it failed and was merged into Regents!
Condoleezza Rice would be a great asset with her foreign affairs experience. She is a strong personality who gains respect even with people who disagree with her political positions.
I feel that she would be a strong Vice-President for a variety of reasons in addition to the obvious one of her being a "Black Woman".
I am chagrined with the suggestion that Condi Rice be considered for VP … I trust that the commentator realized that I was being facetious in suggesting that Bachmann could be competent to be a heartbeat away.
But Rice …. Pleeze she has been wrong from the get-go. It was her job to ask questions and anticipate ramifications of the decisions that were made.
Consider this exchange from Sept. 28, 2003 … five months after the invasion.
MEET THE PRESS : Why did the administration so dramatically underestimate the cost of this war?
DR. RICE: We did not have perfect foresight into what we were going to find in Iraq. The fact of the matter is that this deteriorated infrastructure, one that was completely covered and covered over by the gleaming pictures of Baghdad that made it look like a first-world city …
Why didn’t someone ask the UN Inspectors what the level of electricity was in the country ? They were on the ground and would know what was going on.
Rice’s statement last month: “The question of imminence isn’t whether or not somebody is going to strike tomorrow” seems counter to the National Security Strategy of 2002 which argued “We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilites and objectives of today’s adversaries.”
And even if it is accepted that intelligence errors before the war were “worldwide” while discounting IAEA ElBaradei and Germany’s intelligence service comments, the fact is that even IF everyone from Bill Clinton to Jacques Chirac believed the WMD capablities of Saddam, they DID NOT invade Iraq on that basis. Monitoring of activities and UN Inspections should have proceeded.
Yet the administration’s line is to portray Iraq’s current violence as a Qaeda plot hatched by the Samarra bombing of February 2006.
Why didn’t Rice realize that when the Jordanian Embassy was bombed in August of 2003 and then less than two weeks later, the UN Headquarters, that there were serious problems? Wasn’t the other key turning point the mutilation of American private contractors in Fallujah in April of 2004? Those events happened long before the Samarra bombing. Isn't this evidence that the problem was ex-Batthists and displaced Sunnis than al Qaeda?
Remember that on October 6, 2003 President Bush assigned his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, the authority to manage postwar Iraq naming her as head of Iraq Stabilization Group. On November 10, 2003, she said : “We must stay this course. Our will will not be broken. And we are fighting back. You hear about what happens to American men and women in uniform. But this is a very active strategy, too, of going into these areas, rooting out these remnants. We, on any given day, make many, many arrests. We are killing a number of the enemy. But the key is that the United States and the coalition increasingly has Iraqi partners who are involved in bringing security to Iraq. And I just want to say one other thing -- I just want to say one other thing, 93 percent of the incidents are in an area of the country around Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit -- the long-known-to-be-stronghold-of-Baathism. Most of this country is stable. Most of this country is getting back to normal. We will get a handle on this security situation and resolve the problem.”
That’s the crux of the problem … she failed.
Doesn’t every military leader agree that the solution is not a military but political. Rice has failed BIG TIME on the diplomatic side.
I have said if since 2003, Rice has preformed horribly yet get virtually no blame
Oh and one last comment, since Romney’s comment was that single people are selfish, Rice being single woman would not work.
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