More VP rumors

There are several rumors out there about McCain's vice-presidential pick. The New York Times says it's down between Pawlenty and Romney. I bet that the houses gaffe will decrease the likelihood of Romney. They don't want to be the all-millionaire ticket. The Times says that the McCain campaign toyed with the idea of offering the job to David Petraeus. That seems like a non-starter. The guy doesn't want to get into politics now and it's much better to have him in command in Central Asia and working on Afghanistan.

Byron York says it's between Pawlenty as a safe pick and Ridge as a gamble. York says that Romney is neither a gamble nor a safe pick.

Still, Romney is an unquantifiable here. I mentioned yesterday that if McCain were to pick Ridge, "it will be because he likes him personally and believes Ridge can win Pennsylvania." Now, it's not clear to me that McCain will make the choice based on whether a veep could carry a particular state, but if he did, I've been told, there is a feeling that Romney has a pretty good argument to make that choosing him would help quite a bit in Nevada and Colorado, with their significant Mormon populations. That makes some sense; it's my guess that Romney could do more to bring in Nevada and Colorado than Ridge could in Pennsylvania.

I suspect that many of those Mormons would be voting for McCain anyway, especially if Romney would spend a lot of time campaigning out there. whether he was on the ticket or not.

If the important thing is to do no harm - then the choice of Pawlenty seems clear. A Romney pick will immediately resurrect a flood of quotes of McCain criticizing Romney from the primaries and vice versa. It would open up the below-the-surface anti-Mormon bias that is definitely out there. And there would be all the millionaire jokes.