Mitt Romney Running Mate Speculation Thread

I know Christie's belligerent, and a bully, and a loudmouth, but I think the main thing is that he gives the appearance of being jolly. And Mitt + jolly is a winning combination.

because he's fat...?

veep choices are often asked to be the more strident and attacking half of the ticket, so christie's being naturally belligerent may not disqualify him. if I were willard, I would hope to have a veep who would choose his fights strategically, rather than just going at folks like a guard dog hurling himself against a chain link fence.

if romney needs to repair his relationship with evangelicals, christie is NOT the way to go.

I would think Christie would be a bridge too far for Mitt - it's true, your running mate gets to be the guy who gives the appearance of "shooting from the hip" or whatever but Christie's just tone-deaf. It's easy to imagine his gaffes becoming the day's main story again and again, and to imagine him wanting to double down on whatever the gaffes were. Altho post-Palin that may well be the strategy, some "I stand by everything I'll ever say" dude, but I think team Obama would completely tee off on somebody like Christie

like didn't he tell somebody in a college crowd to suck his dick recently? in which case I join lag∞n in praying for Christie to join the Romney ticket

I was kidding around with the jolly stuff...I'm mostly basing my Christie prediction on how much time the two of them were spending together for a while there, and the (probably mistaken) belief that Romney will want to pick someone who's not as bland as he is. And, as Aimless points out, he might, with some discipline, be a good attack guy. But then I can quickly think of other reasons why he'd be a poor choice. The one thing I don't think anyone's mentioned is that the best pick today (politically) might not be the best pick in August--it'll depend where the race stands then.

Right you are. Mitt and his team will look at a lot of polling and focus group info before they make their choice, and they won't drop a clue until the convention, other than to float the names of people they think might help them for having been mentioned on the short list (without attribution, natch).

pretty sure nominating a Muslim to a judge position disqualifies Christie from national republican political nomination in 2012, no?

One of the CNN people--Crowley, I think--said that with so much media overkill today, "surprise" is at a premium, and that all the people who are at the top of the list right now may have been talked-out by August. As always, I sat in my chair and thought, "Hmmmmn, sounds reasonable."

xp
not when the incumbent's middle name is hussein.

that's sooooo 2008!

even if mitt goes for a surprise & game changing vp pick which he v well feel is necessary come convention time you can bet it will be v well researched and prudent

yeah like I said upthread thematically I think mitt's 'game change' temptation would be a non-politician

he should pick someone from wall st

Or else K street.

Romney/Bronze Bull '12

I was about to jokingly say Elizabeth Dole but she's too old this election cycle

Not sure how crucial it will be for the #2 to have ironclad rightwing credentials - they're not running a primary campaign anymore and there's nobody who will be running attack ads calling out someone for their Muslim-hiring ways or whatever.

he should pick someone from wall st

― lag∞n, Monday, April 16, 2012 8:30 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

shia leboeuf?

romney/boykin '12

Not sure how crucial it will be for the #2 to have ironclad rightwing credentials - they're not running a primary campaign anymore and there's nobody who will be running attack ads calling out someone for their Muslim-hiring ways or whatever.

― Doctor Casino, Monday, April 16, 2012 9:39 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a lot of people are already supporting mitt though gritted teeth, if he chooses someone heterodox they may just throw their hands up

he should pick someone from wall st

― lag∞n, Monday, April 16, 2012 8:30 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

shia leboeuf?

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, April 16, 2012 9:41 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

respect

yeah lagoon's getting at what I meant. the base may full-well get behind Romney come October, but it won't be because he picked someone who doesn't pass the purity test.(which is why I lean towards Ryan as the eventual guy, though a nom-politician is intriguing if far-fetched)

Mitt Romney/Miskel Spillman '12

Not sure how crucial it will be for the #2 to have ironclad rightwing credentials - they're not running a primary campaign anymore and there's nobody who will be running attack ads calling out someone for their Muslim-hiring ways or whatever.

― Doctor Casino, Monday, April 16, 2012 9:39 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a lot of people are already supporting mitt though gritted teeth, if he chooses someone heterodox they may just throw their hands up

― lag∞n, Monday, April 16, 2012 9:43 PM Bookmark

I'd like to think that but it's also like - who is going to go out of their way to loudly and repeatedly remind the Republican electorate that this person is heterodox, remember the gritted teeth etc...I mean compared to the ads Mitt will be running round the clock reminding them of the importance of BEATING OBAMA I'm just not convinced it can do much either way....

who was the last veep choice who might've tipped an election?

don't mean shit

I think that's generally true

gore prob coulda won w/ a less shitty pick tho

who was the last veep choice who might've tipped an election?

don't mean shit

this is generally true. when you're the lead charger in your battalion and everyone's looking to your for direction, then your choice of a running mate doesn't mean much. but when you're a weak, "acceptable", work-with-what-you-got compromise candidate, a firebrand partner who can rally the base could make all the difference. i'm assuming that's gonna be the GOP and romney's strategy, anyway...

who was the last veep choice who might've tipped an election?

don't mean shit
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, April 17, 2012 5:37 AM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

More than that, how many presidential campaigns were tipped by one single campaign decision/moment? Would need to be a pretty close race.

I think vice presidential choices are on par with the convention speech but probably well below the first debate.

Arrrrrrre ya serious? How quickly we forget the rogue wave that almost certainly demolished whatever little chamce might've had in '08.

The fuck. Stupid phone. "whatever chance McCain might've had"

McCain did a great job of sinking his own campaign, but Palin was the cherry on top.

gore prob coulda won w/ a less shitty pick tho

yeah Joementum was my first possible exception

of course, Gore did "win" the election in many ways and blew it in many others

yeah thats more a case of the race being super close than leiberman having a large negative effect

but the underlying point stands tho, in that whatever effect the vp has its marginal enough that it would prob only matter in an unusually close election

xp

Arrrrrrre ya serious? How quickly we forget the rogue wave that almost certainly demolished whatever little chamce might've had in '08.

― Harried Ice Craw (Deric W. Haircare), Tuesday, April 17, 2012 6:21 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Obama would have won anyway. McCain did dumb shit like suspending his campaign.

Palin was the cherry on top.

whew -- I resisted obvious joek

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/the-overrated-vice-presidential-home-state-effect/

seems pretty otm

Sullivan: "A sad excuse: Romney was so obviously the likely candidate we hacks did our best to come up with other possible scenarios. It was called 'keeping hope awake.'" Perfect--sums up the last two or three Republican threads on here.

Speaking of hacks, I heard Gary Bauer on NPR this morning praise the Palin choice because she's pro-choice. Assuming he's not repeating Beltway drivel because it's expected of him, why on earth would he think it matters whether a veep is pro-choice or eats babies with chocolate syrup? Unless you're Cheney, a veep has no policy-making power

well for what it's worth for mccain it might have 'mattered more' because he had a not totally insignificant % chance of dying in office

McCain did dumb shit like suspending his campaign.

btw in re: this, what the fuck was that, really? I can only see two readings: one, he was sincere in his belief that the work in Washington required him to stop campaigning and focus; or, two, he thought that if he did that and Obama didn't, it'd make him look good enough to voters who weren't already going to vote for him, and in the media, to have a positive effect on the campaign. Which seems literally insane to me.

xp - Particularly if Sarah Palin had a microphone in front of her for 4 years.

well he had to do something i guess

i wonder why he thought anyone would believe his 'suspension' would have any meaning

xp

that whole period of the mccain campaign was nonsense. he was in the weeds.

Speaking of hacks, I heard Gary Bauer on NPR this morning praise the Palin choice because she's pro-choice.

I believe you mean "anti-choice" A

there was less to lose when you're clearly behind late in the game, might as well try some stupid stunt

'there is' makes that sentence more readable

Also I dunno, if you think that Mitt Romney is just casting around for any idea or moral stance at all, maybe you think putting someone with strong moral stances that you agree with as his veep is a good idea?

xp

As I read that Nate Silver analysis, it seemed to say that there's absolutely no way on god's green earth to separate anything of real signifigance from the statistical noise, about how a candidate's veep choice affects the eventual voting. If that is the case, then it seems otm to me, too.