http://www.animateit.net/data/media/353/ehlxld.gif

That looks fucking weird with his hands cut off.

Rob Portman of Ohio.
It's a key swing state, and he is an accomplished executive. A conservative, but not known for being a major culture warrior. He's not likely to overshadow Romney, the way someone like Chris Christie would.

What about the Latino governor/senator/congressman in florida. Mario something? All the conservatives continually drool over him - and he's a minority from a swing state.

Marco Rubio.

Patrick Leahy

Michele Bachmann? She draws in the tea party votes and potentially the women voters while Wishy Washy Romney has the less extreme core base.

I'd rather see Portman, but wouldn't put it past the GOP to try the female VP card again.

If you think Bachmann would draw in women voters, you deeply misunderstand life.

bachman wont bring any more voters than that lunatic Palin did.

I was more thinking the tea party, but they'll vote for whoever the GOP puts up...

And Palin drove many of us away. She scared the fuck out of me. If McCain had won with her as Veep and then he had a heart attack, she would have been in charge. OMG! That would have been a Mongolian Cluster Fuck the likes of which the world has never seen!

obama will bring more voters to Romney than Bachmann (sorry for bad spelling early, i should know better, since I am from German parents)

*note - do not do a Google search for ''Mongolian Cluster Fuck" at work

lol @ 2ndWL

Bachmann and Palin are roughly the same in terms of inexperience and incompetence. Bachmann may be a little bit smarter (they don't just hand out J.D.s), but they're both dumb bitches who couldn't lead a school board, much less the United States.

Romney doesn't need to draw in the Tea Party and other extremist elements. It's not like they're going to write in Rick Santorum. The Tea Party is going to vote for Romney no matter what if Romney gets the nomination. Romney needs to reach out to moderates. As long as he stays comfortably right of Obama, he'll have the Tea Party behind him.

The GOP isn't going to pick Rubio, Christie, Daniels, Ryan, or Jeb Bush. I think they're saving those guys for 2016 if necessary. Romney is cannon fodder that has a better than average chance of winning. I don't know, I like Allen West. I predict that Romney will pick a noncontroversial rising GOP star with a spotless background.

One thing the GOP needs to push is the whole Edwards trial. Just push with "look at what the other guys' former nominee did."

Nah, that won't go anywhere. It's old news that Edwards is a douchebag. Besides, Newt Gingrich did basically the same thing. He just didn't use campaign funds to do it.

"He just didn't use campaign funds to do it. "

Exactly, Newt *didn't break the law*!!!! I could care less if a candidate has sex on the side and even pays hush money. But when you use campaign funds to do it, you *broke the law*. Did any GOP candidates break the law to cover up their affairs? We had Clinton lie about it and Edwards pay off his mistress with campaign funds. The law doesn't apply to Dummycrats who strive for power.

I hope Romney picks Joe Biden, who is really the perfect VP: a bit of an idiot, but with good intentions, and he says what's thinking, which is usually kind of dumb. Whenever Biden leaves, I will miss his stupid face and his frequent gaffes. He should be the official mascot of the executive branch.

Of course it doesn't matter who Romney picks, as Obama will win without too much stress, since he is a Wall Street approved centrist who holds entirely to the foreign policies of the Republican Party/military-industrial-complex.

@ Draugnar

That's not what I meant. I meant that Newt is just as much of a douchebag as John Edwards, so any GOP attack on Edwards would be easily countered. They're equally douchey. Newt just happened to be within the law and Edwards was not.

@ ckroberts

If the military-industrial complex is so powerful, then wouldn't they put their money behind Romney? Romney wants to maintain/expand the military, whereas Obama wants to make at least symbolic cuts.

Joey Biden is the worst VP ever. He's worse than Dan Quayle. He's much worse than Dick Cheney. If something happens to Obama, do you really want *Biden* running the country? That's why I hope Romney picks a career military officer like Allen West. It would get more veterans and minorities to vote GOP. And, if the shit hits the fan, someone like Allen West would have the competence to run the country and run it well.

someone boring ill tell you that much

also i think biden is a good vp for what a vp is actually supposed to do. however it is true, that is not very compatible with being okay with him being prez if obama died. oh well.

@gunfighter - I was talking about attacking the legal aspects though. All politicians are douches, but the dems seem to break the law more.

Gunfighter, I think the foreign policy differences between Obama and hard-line foreign policy wing of the Republican Party are almost entirely superficial. I imagine that some influential people would prefer Romney, but in this (like most other things) there is scarcely any daylight between the candidates. I'm sure some on Wall Street would prefer Romney, too, but that doesn't stop them from giving millions to Obama. If the current guy is fine for their purposes, there's no reason to change.

And Joe Biden is a delight. He would be a disaster of a president, mediocre at best. But I think Obama and Bush before him were disasters, so I don't know. Maybe Biden would be like Chester A. Arthur, expected to be terrible and turned out pretty okay.

As to the ostensible topic of this thread, it will be someone who, like Palin, is more ambitious than intelligent, willing to take part in a likely losing cause for the sake of career. Santorum was too much of a dick during the primaries. My guess is somebody in Congress, Portman or Paul Ryan.

@ Draugnar

Sorry. I misinterpreted your original post as sarcasm. I withdraw my reply. But I will agree with you that all politicians are douches.

@ ckroberts

I mostly agree with that analysis. Wall St. is definitely behind Obama, as well as Hollywood (for whatever that's worth). However, I think the military-industrial complex is behind Romney, but they'll still be happy as long as Ron Paul loses.

I don't think he'll pick Paul Ryan. Like I said, the GOP leadership probably wants to keep Ryan and people like him in reserve for a possible 2016 run. If Obama wins reelection, I think that the Dems will lose badly in 2016. Obama is Obama. No one in the Democratic Party is anything like him.

Bounce. I want some more input on this.

Portman looks to be a wise guess:

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/06/netanyahu-vets-possible-romney-vp.html

Let's all regurgitate more names we heard on the teevee!

Don't watch TV news or TV talking heads. I value my time and intelligence more than that.

As far as I know, Mitch Daniels was the only one of the people whose name has been floated for the VP slot to attend the 2012 Bilderberg meeting. I don't believe the conspiracy theories that these people run the world or some such nonsense, but he wouldn't be going to a meeting with literally the world's most influential people if he really were just the outgoing governor of Indiana.

They may have been talking to him about 2016 or 2020. Those people plan ahead. I'm sure they've talked to the VP designee long before last week.

Well, I'm not saying the people there pick who is on presidential tickets or set transnational policy in secret. I'm saying that the meetings are where already important people go to talk about issues and since he went that likely makes him a bigger player than even a Daniels fanboy like myself expected. As for talking about 2016 or 2020, the GOP usually nominates the number two as the number one eventually. Whether Romney wins or loses his running mate would be the automatic favorite in the next open election. So our analyses aren't mutually exclusive, even though Tolstoy, true to form, buys the whole New World Order angle.