Okay, it’s time to get on with it: Everybody with a “short list”
for Mitt Romney’s running-mate choice seems to have most of the
same names on it, for the very good reason that sometimes political
calculus is something well short of Einsteinian physics.
Nonetheless, it is well worth analyzing the potential candidates’
strengths and weaknesses, because the entire election really can be
won or lost even in the small margin of electoral difference that a
running mate can make.
Today we begin (but don’t finish) the list of Hillyer’s
Tremendous Ten – or rather 10 along with two bonus picks – based
not on a prediction of what Romney will do, but rather what he
should do.
To review the
first three segments of this series
of columns, I have variously ruled out Nikki Haley, Susana
Martinez, Allen West, Rick Snyder, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Jeb
Bush, Mike Huckabee, Condoleezza Rice — and Kelly Ayotte, although
more on her later. I have listed eight longshots, somewhat in fun
but not entirely without merit: Artur Davis, Heath Shuler (the
least wise), Richard Burr, Frank Wolf, Peter Pace, Carly Fiorina,
Liz Cheney, and a name I later bumped up to the top 25, John
Ashcroft. In addition to Ashcroft, in no particular order, my
numbers 11-25 included Jim DeMint, Luis Fortuno, John Kasich, John
Thune, Tim Pawlenty, John Engler, Terry Branstad, Matt Blunt, Dave
Camp, Frank Keating, Michael Mukasey, Wayne Allard, Janice Rogers
Brown — and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, although more on her later as
well.
I never mentioned, but continue to blow hot and cold on the idea
of, U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma — somebody who, alas, is in a
nasty spat with Americans for Tax Reform and who oddly considers
Barack Obama “a personal friend” and thus might pull too many
punches in the fall campaign.
I’ve also
explained the “how and the why” of making a choice, a much
longer discussion that can be encapsulated as encompassing
“experience, philosophical soundness, and definitely the ability to
politically help the ticket.” In this year, where the threat to the
republic represented by four more years of Barack Obama is so
great, it is an unfortunate imperative that the last of those three
considerations predominate even more than usual, thus making some
names (barely) palatable who otherwise would not be. It also makes
it possible that promising candidates who might not have acquired
sufficient stature may yet merit a second look.
In light of that last consideration, two names suggest
themselves as choices 10B and 10C. First is New Hampshire’s
freshman U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who fails my otherwise
hard-and-fast “two year rule.” After listening to Ayotte last week
in a small-group setting, I came away so impressed that I am
tempted to break the rule. Ayotte came across as a solid
conservative, and tremendously thoughtful and, more important,
remarkably knowledgeable on what should always be a national
campaign’s two biggest issues, namely national defense and the
federal budget (and the budget’s effect on both freedom and on the
overall economy). She still breaks my rule demanding adequate
experience, but she bears watching.
Choice 10B is Rep. McMorris Rodgers of Washington State, covered
in an earlier column. Since I wrote that, I came across an
earlier feature on her in which the great U.S. Rep. (soon to be
Indiana Governor) Mike Pence said she has “almost a Thatcheresque
quality.” That’s quite a recommendation.
But now we start with choice number 10, who exactly fits the
category of “names (barely) palatable who otherwise would not be.”
As it happens, I hereby predict that Romney will choose this man,
an idea not pleasing to me.
Last weekend, Andy McCarthy of National Review Online
explained comprehensively why conservatives should see that New
Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is “not one of us.”
Among other factors, wrote McCarthy, “The brute fact is that, while
Christie is not a hardcore statist, he is a mild progressive —
which is to say, a ‘compassionate conservative’ in the Bush mold
who wants to make government ‘work,’ not drastically reduce its
size and scope.”
Nonetheless, Christie offers Romney a boatload of political
advantages. First, he is perhaps the single most effective
communicator anywhere in today’s Republican Party. He talks in ways
everybody can understand. His directness is refreshing, and it can
cut through every strand of Obama’s various webs of deceit. Second,
Christie can excite conservatives and Tea Partiers with his
in-your-face style, while providing substance that comes across to
independents less as ideological than as indubitably practical.
Third, he would shake up the electoral map – forcing Obama to spend
far more time defending New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and probably New
Hampshire, Maine, and even Connecticut than Obama otherwise would.
Even if Christie doesn’t succeed in helping Romney win an otherwise
unreachable northeastern state, his ability to expand the playing
field by his persona alone (without adding extra GOP resources)
would force Obama to dilute his resources in a way that
might hold Obama back in other swing states as well.
Meanwhile, about the only place Christie might marginally hurt
the ticket is in the Deep South – but his pugnaciousness, again,
can make up for some of his ideological apostasies (in the mind of
many southern voters), and it’s also highly doubtful that Romney
will come close to losing anywhere in the Deep South anyway.
Choice Number 9 is Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.
McDonnell suffers from two severe defects: First, close observers
all agree the man is almost terminally cautious; and second, his
pathetically weak “compromise”
on voter fraud shows him to be virtually clueless about the stakes
in one of the most important under-the-radar battles in American
politics and government today. On the plus side, McDonnell would be
almost certain to nail down otherwise semi-swing state Virginia for
Romney, and he is one of the only potential candidates with a
proven ability to appeal both to Evangelicals and to soccer-mom
suburbia at the same time. McDonnell can help reassure various
constituencies about the Romney team, while scaring off nary a
soul.
Choice Number 8 is Ohio’s U.S. Sen. Rob
Portman, who of course tops the lists of most
establishmentarians and purveyors of conventional wisdom. Weighing
against him should be the well-founded impression that he excites
absolutely nobody. Also, he re-emphasizes the Romney-as-whitebread
meme – silver spoon Dartmouth grad who is also the son of a
Dartmouth grad joins silver spoon presidential contender also the
son of a presidential contender. Third, in a year in which Bushes
remain in bad odor (and in which the Obama team is salivating about
making the election again a referendum on Bush 43), Portman is one
of the only men in public office who is a creature not just of one
Bush presidency but two, with the Bushes being his political
sponsors every step of the way.
Weighing in Portman’s favor, of course, is the sense that he can
add a needed point or two to Romney in Ohio, where a point or two
could make all the difference. Also weighing in his favor is that,
like McDonnell, he is inoffensive enough to scare nobody away.
Choice Number 7 is Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels.
Militating against him is the reality that Indiana already is
probably safe for Romney – and if it’s not, then Romney’s goose is
likely cooked anyway. It is also questionable whether Daniels will
be embraced by non-Indianans as a more broadly “Heartland
candidate” who could also help in Iowa, Ohio, or Wisconsin. On the
other hand, Daniels is a tremendously credible figure. He is smart,
knowledgeable, accomplished, and extremely good at explaining, and
selling, the need for budgetary discipline. He also has proved to
be a surprisingly able retail campaigner, coming across as a
motorcycle-enthusiast
man of the people in his successful Indiana campaigns.
Indeed, while Christie, McDonnell and Portman are conventional
wisdom choices to be Top-5 picks rather than at the bottom of a
Top-10 list, it is Daniels who truly ought to be ascending “with a
bullet,” quite possibly meriting the closest attention of all as
the summer progresses.
Keeping in mind the idea that Daniels might deserve to top the
list come August, we’ll stop this week’s column right here, with
next week’s “Super Six” finally completing my Spring Veep series.
Until then, conservatives this year may unfortunately need to
remember the famous words of the Rolling Stones: “You can’t always
get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find,
you get what you need.”
