Interesting

Should John McCain choose Mitt Romney as his running mate? 83% - Yes. Romney appeals to conservatives and helps balance the ticket in other ways, too. 7% - No, McCain should consider someone less known to the nation, such as Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. 3% - No, McCain should choose someone who adds to McCain’s own foreign policy strengths, such as General David Petraeus. 6% - Not sure any of the above are the qualities McCain should focus on. Total Votes: 1,307

Quite an interesting perspective coming to us courtesy of the Boston Herald. Looks like Romney's business background, charm, and ability to raise money on behalf of the Camp McCain has caught the eye of many voters. 83% is quite a staggering number. I must admit I was a Romney fan and wanted him to take it, I still believe he'd be the perfect addition to McCain's ticket and would help bring in the Conservative vote that McCain desperately needs. With Romney on his side McCain to put a serious wedge between him and Obama in the polls and take the lead...

I like the idea of Palin as VP quite a bit. This thing last week about her ex-brother-in-law being a rogue cop wasn’t too serious, was it? It didn’t sound that way.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t mind Romney myself but I think there are too many people who dislike him. McCain should pick someone who very few Republicans hate, to avoid driving anyone who’s lukewarm about McCain away.

The problem McCain has is this. He is doing OK with conservatives. But there is a fairly large and vocal minority who simply hate him, won’t vote for him, might even vote against him. And there are people like Bob Barr.

Now, is there anything McCain can do to get Bob Barr to drop out? Short of picking Bob Barr as VP, probably not.

Is there anyone McCain could pick that would cause conservatives to vote for him? Well, the conservatives who say they will never vote for him won’t care. Those who are saying they WILL vote for him, but ONLY if he picks a conservative, have different picks.

Some say Fred Thompson. Some say Mitt Romney. Others Huckabee, or Palin, or Jindal.

But for each of those picks, a group of those “searching conservatives” say the pick would actually ANGER them. Palin is just an affirmative action pick, Jindal failed to act quickly on the pay raise, Romney is liberal, Huckabee is a big spender, Thompson doesn’t do anything for evangelicals or is too old.

And worse, each of those picks, to the degree they are seen as conservative, risk turning off voters who were considering McCain, but will see the VP pick as indicating McCain is abandoning his “principles”, whatever those are.

So if McCain is even going to THINK about a conservative, he’s going to pick a person who was “acceptable” to a majority of conservatives, but still polls well with the McCain base, or well enough to hold them.

Romney appears to meet that criteria. But it is more likely in my opinion that he’s going to just go with a pragmatic pick, whether we as conservatives like it or not. Which means Pawlenty, or Ridge, or Portman, or maybe someone not on our radar.

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