McCain chooses Ridge!!

I’m going to go ahead and announce this, even though it’s not official yet. McCain is going to choose Tom Ridge as his running mate. It should be obvious to everyone. It was obvious to me when I started this blog in May. It should be obvious to everyone.

One thing I like about McCain is you can get a sense for what he thinks. He’s pretty honest in how he feels. He doesn’t pander. He doesn’t waver. I knew from the outset he would be picking Ridge.

According to this report, McCain has already made his choice, and the choice will be notified on Thursday.

But here’s a strong clue that it will be Ridge (as if you needed one).

[O]fficials said he was considering one or more candidates who support abortion rights.

Okay, I guess you could throw Lieberman in there, but a Liberman pick would be even more controversial than Ridge. He’s going with Ridge. And the two are going to give Obama-Biden a run for their money.

Misdirection on VP pick?

According to this article, Tom Ridge is to introduce John McCain on Saturday at an event in Southwestern PA. After which, McCain is set to announce his VP choice.

This is taken to mean that Ridge will not be the VP pick, because he has the job of introducing the pair. I think perhaps this is a bit of misdirection.

In the lead up to Saturday, the press will be keeping close tabs on the whereabouts of each of the VP candidates. They’ll be tracking their locations. Whoever looks like they’re heading to PA via plane, train or automobile or whatever will raise speculation in the press.

But by pre-announcing that Ridge is going to be there in some capacity, you give him a plausible reason to be there for the announcement.

I could be wrong. But I have yet to see anything that convinces me that Ridge is out of contention.

So it’s Biden

You can see my earilier post here about what I think of Biden.

The fact that he chose someone who is strong on foreign policy and is a six-term senator just highlights the fact that Obama is weak on foreign policy and lacks experience. It does not make the ticket stronger.

His passing up Clinton also says a lot about him. He chose Biden because he was a better personal fit, although Clinton is far far stronger as a VP. The fact that he doesn’t get along with her says a lot about him. He doesn’t want to be overshadowed. He doesn’t want HRC stealing his limelight.

Anyway, one more week until McCain picks his running mate. Should be interesting.

Why Obama should pick Clinton

Obama is hours away from announcing his running mate. According to reports at the moment, he’s already decided. Who will he pick?

The person he should pick is Clinton.

1. She said would take the job.

2. The others (Biden, Bayh, Kaine) just don’t add anything to the ticket in the way Clinton does.

3. Clinton would surely put the ticket over the top and McCain-Ridge or Mcain-Whoever would find the combo tough to beat.

The question is: can Obama put his own feelings aside and do what it takes to win? Putting her on the ticket would truly unify the Democratic party. But my feeling is that he simply wants to go his own way and do it without her support.

If he doesn’t choose her, it will certainly make the campaign a lot harder for him. But if goes with any of the others, at least the McCain camp will have little to worry about.

MORE READING from the Daily News, which also supports putting Clinton on the ticket.

Obama’s half brother living on $1 a day

I’m not sure what to think about this article that Obama’s half brother George Obama has been found living in Nairobi on less than a dollar a day.

It’s his brother from a different mother … the two have only met twice, the most recent time was in 2006.

A lot of his detractors question why Obama hasn’t offered more support to his half-brother. A lot of Obama’s supporters question why he should (which is a curious position to be defending … I guess it shows all liberals do not in fact have bleeding hearts).

But I can only ask myself, what I would I do if I were in the same position? In fact, I wish I were as fortunate as Obama to be in the same position.

Like Obama, I also have half brothers and half sisters, but unlike him, I have never met of them. These brothers and sisters are possibly living in the developed world. At least Obama was lucky enough to meet his brother as recently as 2006.

I’ve been to Thailand several times to search for my half-siblings or information that would lead me to them. No such luck. And because I am not running for president, I don’t have the press doing the job for me.

If were to meet them I would be very happy. And if they needed help, I would help them in whatever way I could.

I can’t speak for Obama and he deals with his family issues in his own way. We don’t know what the relationship is between him and his brothers and sisters. But he doesn’t seem to be particularly close to them, and if I were in the same situation I would probably do more to be a part of their lives.

McCain to hold another rally in Pa on Aug 30

Let’s see. McCain is likely to announce his VP pick on August 29th, his birthday.

The very next day, he will be at a minor league baseball stadium in southwestern Pennsylvania to hold another rally. Tom Ridge will likely be there. But will he be there as his running mate?

The mystery will be decide in little more than a week, and soon we’ll have a McCain-Ridge ticket.

We’ll know very soon, and it’s going to be McCain-Ridge!

Obama is going to announce very soon and it might be Biden blah blah blah. Very interesting pick there. In fact, I would loveObama to pick Biden. Here’s why:

McCain has been saying that Obama lacks experience, especially when it comes to foreign policy, to which Obama counters by saying he’s ready to be president. But doesn’t Obama just confirm McCain’s criticism by pickinga VP who is stronger than he is on foreign policy? Yes, Biden wouldbring foreign policy experience to the Dem ticket, experience which at the moment is sorely lacking. Such a pick just highlights Obama’s shortcomings.

Also, haven’t we heard from Obama that McCain has been in Washington too long? But he may be picking someone who has been in Washington just as long as McCain!! I can’t await for Obama to announce. Because when Obama derides McCain as a Washington insider, he could just as easily be talking about Biden.

But let’s get to Tom Ridge. People say the abortion trial ballon has popped, and yet McCain operatives are stilling trying to sell a pro-choice candidate to the base. What does that tell you? Ridge is still in the running. I feel it in my bones that he’s going to be the one.

Picking Ridge as a VP would send a strong message to the Indie voters, fence sitters and disgruntled Dems (ie Clinton supporters). If McCain is not afraid of alienating his own base, what does that say about the kind of man he would be as president?

If you want to win, you have to take risks. Don’t play safe by going with those other guys.

McCain-Ridge ticket coming down in the odds

Ladbrokes, the UK bookmaker, is now offering 8-1 odds that Ridge will be McCain’s running mate, down from 16-1 previously. I’ve been a backer of this ticket since April, when Ridge was barely mentioned as a running mate. In fact, some odds makers lumped him in with the other candidates known as “rest of pool.

Meanwhile, Ridge continues to explain how he would get a long in a pro-life administration. In fact, nearly all of the articles written about Ridge in the past week talk about his pro-choice stance, as though that were the only thing interesting about the man. But this work is necessary: HW Bush had to go through the same process to get on the Reagan ticket.

I hope I don’t have to write about Ridge’s pro-choice stance again, so here are my final thoughts:

1. The GOP base needs to be widened and putting Ridge on the ticket would help do that. If McCain hadn’t seized the nomination, then Independent voters like myself wouldn’t even be considering voting GOP this November.

2. The social conversatives who say they would not vote for McCain if Ridge is on the ticket really need to think about that. If you are a pro-lifer, is the alternative that much better?

3. Ridge, because of his pro-choice stance, would help McCain reach more Independent and women voters. Picking Ridge would also show that McCain is not afraid to challenge party orthodoxy.

I’ve said before that if McCain remains true to himself (ie he ignores political considerations and just goes who he thinks would be the best person for the job), he’ll end up picking Ridge.

And that choice, the single most important choice a candidate running for president can make, would say a lot about how he would also run his presidency.

And here’s the fallout

Well, it’s no surprise that anti-abortion groups are piling on against Tom Ridge.

What this article doesn’t examine is what Ridge would do in terms of getting indie voters. In addition, do the “pro-life” groups think Obama would be a better choice than McCain-Ridge?

McCain is pro-life, but by not supporting him they are choosing the greater of two evils.

McCain gives strong endorsement to Ridge

McCain, in an interview with The Weekly Standard, has made clear that he is open to the pro-choice Ridge.

He says the GOP are “pro-life” but there is room enough for “pro-choice” as well. McCain is basically testing the waters here. If there is little to no reaction from the conservatives, then he’s free to consider Ridge more fully for the VP slot.

And did he diss Bloomberg or what?

“You know, Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens to be pro-choice. And I don’t think that that would necessarily would rule Tom Ridge out.

“I think it’s a fundamental tenet of our party to be pro-life but that does not mean we exclude people from our party that are pro-choice,” Mr McCain said.

He called the gap between the two sides a disagreement – “albeit strong”.

“And I think Ridge is a great example of that,” McCain added. “Far more so than Bloomberg, because Bloomberg is pro-gay rights, you know, a number of other issues.”