UNCONVENTIONAL
Vice President Dick Cheney will not make an
appearance at the Republican convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul
next month, according to sources in his office. Cheney has not
sought a speaking slot at the convention, nor has his staff sought
a role for him at the convention.
The McCain campaign has not gone out of its way to reach out to
Cheney, though a segment of conservative Republicans had been
pressing the campaign to include Cheney in the convention
agenda.
“Conservatives still think highly of him and are enthusiastic
supporters whenever he speaks,” says a leading conservative who has
spoken to the campaign about Cheney. “For a campaign that has
largely failed in reaching out to conservatives, reaching out to
Cheney wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
McCain and Cheney famously do not get along, and with McCain’s
focus being almost exclusively on attracting independents and women
to the polls, it’s not a surprise that engaging Cheney isn’t on the
top of his list.
KAINE COUNTERPART
Democrat House members were telling close associates late last week
that senior Obama campaign aides were hinting that Virginia
governor Tim Kaine was the pick of Sen.
Barack Obama for the vice-presidential
nomination.
That comes just as word has spread — mainly by his own people
— that Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, an unknown to
most Americans, is considered a top candidate for Sen. John
McCain’s vice-presidential pick. Cantor is viewed as a
conservative in the vein of Ronald Reagan, but unlike other
high-profile GOPers in the House, he has little or no legislative
or policy hallmarks to inform the general public.
“He’s great with PR and having his staff post on blog sites and
jumping on the bandwagon for issues, but when it comes to actually
getting those issues framed and set up, he hasn’t done much heavy
lifting,” says an aide to Rep. Roy Blunt, the
House GOP whip. “His strength is fundraising and as a face for the
camera. And that’s probably what McCain needs right now.”
Cantor is a prolific fundraiser, however, particularly along the
“K Street” corridor in Washington. Those ties to lobbyists are
largely what has the McCain campaign concerned and are the focus of
the campaign’s vetting.
CHINA SHOWDOWN
At a time when Olympics host Communist China, which in the past
several years has hacked the Pentagon’s communications network and
stolen human rights data from congressional computer hard drives,
is coming under increasing pressure from conservatives and segments
of the media, some conservatives are coming to the Chi-Com’s
defense.
In the past several weeks columnist Robert
Novak, a conservative well known to be soft on mainland
China for free-trade reasons, has published a broadside attack against Rep.
Thaddeus McCotter, a member of House GOP
leadership and leading voice in the anti-Chi-Com Caucus.
Just a day after McCotter helped lead what amounted to a sit-in
on the House floor after the Democrats shut down debate on oil
drilling legislation, a staffer for the White House Writers Group,
which has done work for from pro-Chi-Com-U.S. trade organizations,
has also indirectly attacked McCotter, criticizing in a Wall
Street Journal online commentary the work of the Republican Policy Committee,
which he chairs.
Given China’s actions against the United States government, as
well as the current beating it is taking over its clamp down on
speech, travel, and association for the Olympics (for example, the
Chi-Coms spent days forcing bars and nightclubs around Beijing to
agree to bar black athletes from entering their establishments),
some House members are feeling uncomfortable with their “free
trade” position on China.
“We’re going to have re-think some of this, I think, leading
into the election,” says one House member well known as a supporter
of free trade with China. “The balancing act we’ve been able to
make is becoming a bit more untenable as China’s behavior in other
areas becomes more apparent to voters. The Olympics may be the last
straw.”
