Random musings

Now that Jim Webb is off the table, Evan Bayh is far and away Barack Obama's best VP option.
Tim Kaine is second and Bill Richardson and Sen. Clinton are tied for 3rd.

McCain's top 5 in order: Rice, Palin, Lieberman, Bloomberg, Jindal.

The second tier -- otherwise known as the Rush Limbaugh Division, as El Rushbo probably would have a big problem with at least the top 4 -- reads: Pawlenty, Ridge, Crist.

Dick Morris recently compared Mitt Romney to cat food. If McCain still chooses Romney as his running mate, I'm going to jump out the window.

John Edwards campaigned cross-country with his family and smugly threw stones at President Clinton in 1998 from a glass house. Last Friday, he admitted to having an affair. Al Gore is a globetrotting climate-change crusader who preaches the apocalypse unless we reduce our carbon usage. Independent watchdog groups note that his monstrous compound in Tennessee has a "carbon footprint" 21 times larger than the normal single-family home. Now I bet you're going to tell me that the most transformative, post-racial candidate of my lifetime has been playing the race card.

The fact that not only President Bush but also Vice-President Cheney will speak at the Republican convention is mind-blowing and utterly stupid. The GOP has a wealth of rising stars who could speak instead -- Jindal, Pawlenty and Palin being at the top of the list -- and trotting out party leaders of whom the electorate has tired is entirely counterproductive. McCain needs to spend his summer distancing himself from Bush as much as possible and kicking the White House in the teeth.

Adding to the GOP's woes, the party is bracing for a blowout in the race for the Missouri governorship. In the battle to replace outgoing Republican Gov. Matt Blunt, Attorney Gen. Jay Nixon might beat U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof by 20 points.

Most of the same conservatives who revile President Clinton not for his policies, but for having an affair, would give Louisiana Sen. David Vitter a standing ovation if he walked into the room.

In fact, between the end of the Clinton Era and last Friday, virtually every major Washington scandal -- Delay, Cunningham, Abramoff, Craig, Vitter, Stevens -- involved a Republican.

I don't miss Mike Huckabee's snarky populist-neoconservative rhetoric. Perhaps he's not dead yet though. After all, he didn't major in math -- he majored in miracles.