Reposted from my blog over at
Three Guys:
Front page of the NY Times today speculates that Cheney's about to get dropped from the ticket "for health reasons." Of course I can't imagine this happening, what with Cheney being the actual president and all. Who would run the country if he left? Bush? Dear God.
Dumping your VP is a huge admission of error, and this administration has never admitted a single error. You could say it's for health reasons, but that wouldn't fool anyone, not at this point. Dumping Cheney would give a ton of ammunition to the Dems without even really yanking Cheney's negatives off the table; after all, he was still Bush's pick in 2000, the man Bush thought should be #2, and now he's done such a bad job that he's got to be dumped? The spin writes itself.
But let's pretend:
A
Cheney-McCain switch would obviously be a rhetorical homerun for the Bushes, because of the media's insistence that Kerry asked McCain first despite the little fact
that it isn't true. (Kerry said he discovered Love Canal, too, apparently.) But McCain hates Bush. Not only that, but the legions of anti-Bush independents and Democrats (the very people whose admiration makes McCain such a national, beloved public figure) would view it as a complete betrayal. A McCain backlash could even substantially mute the crossover vote impact of a Bush-McCain ticket. He'd be burning a lot of bridges to save the campaign of a man he hates, so I just don't see it happening. But I don't want it to happen, either.
A Cheney-Powell switch would also have its advantages, although Powell has lost a lot of his crossover cred in recent years. It would undoubtedly make an in-road into the black vote, however. This poll from last wek indicates that Bush/Powell beat Kerry/Edwards by 9%. But the GOP's marriage to racism makes this a particularly difficult nut to crack; just because white people tell a pollster they'll vote for an African American doesn't mean they'll actually do it in the voting booth, as we saw in Louisiana last november. The so-called "Wilder Effect" could hit the GOP harder than it even would Democrats, because these potential non-voters comprise part of their natural base. This remains the most frightening switch, though.
Then there's Bush-Rice, being flogged by such luminaries as Instapundit. I don't really understand why she's so popular among warblogger types--inexperienced, unqualified, and essentially incompetent, she's done a terible job at NSA--other than the persistent need of moderate Republicans to prove "we're not all like that." Well, in addition to the Wilder Effect and the potentially related Ferraro Effect, we have what Matt Yglesias points out is a huge liability for the unmarried Dr. Rice, the widespread Washington-insider rumors that she is a lesbian. I hadn't ever heard those rumors, and personally I prefer the rumors that she and her "husband" President Bush are having an affair--but could the religious conservatives in Bush's base ever swallow the indignity of having to cast their anti-gay vote for a (potential) lesbian? And it mutes the GOP's nonsensical "experience" attacks on the much-more-popular Edwards to boot. Unlikely.
Bush-Giuliani is a pipe dream of liberal-to-moderate Republicans. There's no way that a pro-choice, twice-divorced, New York Republican--who has having a very public affair while still in the mayor's office, got locked out of Gracie Mansion by his wife, and wound up sleeping on the couch of two gay friends--is going to be picked to replace the base's beloved Cheney, not to mention that campaigning on his courage and decorum on 9/11 only serves to remind people just how badly Bush bungled the immediate response to the attack. Dream on.
And Frist is a nobody nationally. No benefit.
But seriously: I can't imagine that it won't be Cheney.