Veepstake Monday: The Early Line – 03.03.08

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. We’re down to roughly six months and counting before the candidates pick their toadies. Who’s in? Who’s out? Who’s up? Who’s down? Who saved a baby from a well and rocketed onto the list from nowhere? Who showed up for a weekend Klan rally and posed with a Grand Dragon, and rocketed back to oblivion. We’ve got our finger on the pulse of America’s next heartbeat away.

This is an every-other-Monday feature in VeepsBlog 2008 and, as always, all legitimate candidates will be given their due, and we’ll never relegate a dark horse to the glue factory prematurely.

THE REPUBLICANS – JOHN MCCAIN

Rob Portman – U.S. Trade Representative: He has shown up on a number of McCain short lists. A former Congressman from Ohio, he brings American breadbasket cache to the table and is a young complement to McCain’s Straight Talk Express. Former Director of the Office of Management and Budget, he also brings economic credentials that John McCain admits he lacks. Followed right-wing warm-up guest Bill Cunningham at last Tuesday’s unfortunate Columbus McCain rally and thanked Cunningham effusively for his support, after Cunningham’s snarling, blood-dripping-from-his-fangs denunciations of Obama. Portman was backpedaling like Wile E. Coyote by the time John McCain arrived and issued a categorical repudiation of Cunningham’s remarks. The only short list Portman is on now is to cut the ribbon at a future Snackwell’s plant opening.
VeepsBlog 2008 line: 77 to 1 

Kay Bailey Hutchison – U.S. Senator, Texas: Brings the sister vote.  From a big Red State. Good conservative rep but doesn’t turn off any significant bloc on either end of the spectrum. Also a U.S. Senator, though–never a good combination. Planning a possible run for Texas Governor in 2010, and doesn’t want the stink of a losing Vice Presidential bid on her. Last Sunday on This Week, said flatly that she wasn’t interested. Still, it is a job no one ever turns down.
VeepsBlog 2008 line: 22 to 1

Mitt Romney – Multi-millionaire, Massachusetts: Romney and McCain absolutely hate one another. McCain needling the former governor on his Iraq positions was one of the rare highlights of the Republican debates, and one of the rare instances where Romney showed any emotion that wasn’t fed to him by his groomers. Inexplicably, the entire right-wing Limbaughcracy has fallen under his sway, and same crowd has again turned on McCain after he threw Bill Cunningham overboard last week. This might be the shotgun marriage that has to happen if the Republicans are going to have any serious chance this fall.
VeepsBlog 2008 line: 8 to 1

THE DEMOCRATS – BARACK OBAMA

Kathleen Sebelius – Governor, Kansas: Female from the heartland. As Governor has executive experience to bolster Obama. Party up-and-comer, gave Democratic response to Bush’s 2008 State Of The Union, saying Bush’s speech should be “a wakeup call”.  Unfortunately, her speech was anything but. Passionless and uninspired, she had eyelids dropping across the country as fast as her Vice Presidential viability.
VeepsBlog 2008 line: 25 to 1

Hillary Clinton – Senator, New York: The current Vegas favorite at 27-20. This would be a Mother Teresa move for party unity, but a cold day in Hades that she would even consider it. She’s been to the mountaintop. If she can’t have that, she’s not going to pass up a shot at Senate Majority Leader, and certainly not to work for that scrawny, jug-eared pontificator.
VeepsBlog 2008 line: 30 to 1

Retired General Wesley Clark: Adds a big military schwing to an otherwise flaccid area for Obama, and an area that McCain is going to use like a blunt object to beat Obama over and over and over. Wasn’t the best campaigner in 2004, though, and has been tight with Hillary up to this point. Still, a white General would look most impressive on the other end of this ticket.
VeepsBlog 2008 line: 6 to 1