Phil: Your antipathy to Mitt Romney has clouded your judgment. You declare that Romney “won’t deliver Massachusetts and Republicans don’t need him to deliver Utah,” but you’ve apparently completely forgotten about Michigan. Beyond that, you seem to think that Romney’s weakness as a presidential candidate makes him weak as a vice presidential candidate. That’s nonsense. George H.W. Bush was a pretty weak presidential candidate in 1980, but he made perfect sense as a running mate — he shored up support among moderate Republicans who might have otherwise been slightly leery of Reagan. Similarly, giving Romney a spot on the ticket would go a long way toward calming the nerves of the anti-McCain faction that Romney courted with quite a bit of success.
