Veepstake Monday – The Inside Line: 05-19-2008

The Dems’ had their moment in the sun last week, and this week we check in with the GOP to read the tea leaves and see who’s going to carry John McCain’s water and his Meuslix this fall. Does he need a handler or a glad-hander? A huckster or a Huckabee? A man with a plan or a man with a tan? Call it ageism, but between his advanced years (he would be the oldest man ever elected to a first-term as President), his pronounced anger management issues, and his senior moments that not only recur with an increasing frequency akin to maternity contractions, but often carry over into stretches hours and days long. For the first time since Ronald Reagan, electors have to seriously consider the possibility it might be up to his Veep to finish what John McCain started.

Charlie Crist – Governor, Florida: This one is still Secretariat. He’s got every bonafide that McCain needs–youth, a monster electoral state where he’s enormously popular, he’s suspiciously gay-enough to attract Log Cabins and pocketbook independents who might cross over (for lack of a better term) yet deniably gay-enough to placate the troglodyte wing of the party who wouldn’t elect a gay to be Barack Obama’s gravedigger. There isn’t much to disrecommend him at this point.
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 1.5 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (4/28/2008): 2 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line  (4/14/2008): 3 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (2/18/2008): 6 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (3/31/2008):4 to 1

Mike Huckabee – Former Governor, Arkansas: He’s trying way too hard and doing it badly. It’s hard to find many positives here. He didn’t help himself last week with his retarded joke at the NRA Convention, which was worse than inappropriate, but awkwardly-formed and not funny. There’s been talk of the yuckmeister Huckabee getting a talk-show gig, but his taste and timing weren’t there last week. With the possible exception of Calvin Coolidge, there’s been no genuinely funny Veep since Thomas Riley Marshall in 1913, and Governor, you’re no Thomas Riley Marshall. If you don’t have that, you’ve got a state with 10 electoral votes, and that’s not enough to bring to the table.
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 27 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (4/28/08): 16 to 1

Jim DeMint – Senator, Ohio: The war isn’t going to be won without a bare-knuckles fight in Ohio (and a lot of eyeballs on the ballot boxes this time around). Jim DeMint is a long shot, if for no other reason than Barack is surely going to make it his sole mission to short-circuit the Rust Belt advantage by picking Indiana Senator Evan Bayh or Ohio Governor Ted Strickland. Still, if he got beaten severly in the Veep debate with Barack’s pick, which is probable, he’d have to face the snarky headline, “Creamed DeMint.”
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 40 to 1

George Voinovich – Senator, Ohio: Similarly, McCain needs Ohio strength to win what is going to soon become apparent is his longshot bid for the Presidency, and it doesn’t get much more golden than Ohio. Nonetheless, Senator Voinovich is a little too naked in his ambition, from a recent TheHill.com survey of all U.S. Senators of whether they’d be amenable to being tapped for the #2 spot: “Honestly, if John McCain came to me and said, ‘George, I think that you would help me and should be part of my team,’ I’d have to say, ‘Yes, I’d be glad to help.’ The fact of the matter is, I’m worried about our country. I’m really worried. And I want to run again for only one reason, that things are so screwed up, I’m just worried about my kids. So if somebody came to me and said, ‘We really think you could help us do this,’ I couldn’t say no because maybe it’s another way of serving my country and it’s maybe even more important than being a senator. The first question I’d ask is, ‘What role would you want me to play? If you want me to give a bunch of speeches, I’m not the guy. Get somebody else. If you want me to roll up the shirtsleeves, get up early in the morning, dot the I’s and cross the T’s, do substantive stuff? OK.’ “
You’re worried about your legacy, and riding out your career as America’s #2 would be a fine place to cement it. But you’re 45 days older than John McCain, so…no.
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 63 to 1

Joseph Lieberman – Senator, Connecticut: This man can’t grudge-fuck his former party enough. He’s already waxing romantic about bombing Iran into the Stone Age and he couldn’t buy a ticket to the Dems’ convention in Denver, so he’s more than happy to head for Minneapolis-St. Paul instead.
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 5 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (3/17/08): 14 to 1