{"id":15041,"date":"2012-07-11T12:41:55","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T16:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=15041"},"modified":"2012-07-11T14:26:21","modified_gmt":"2012-07-11T18:26:21","slug":"vp-pick-clarification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/15041\/vp-pick-clarification\/","title":{"rendered":"VP Pick Clarification"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ashton makes some interesting points<\/a>. For what it’s worth, my bets are hedged all over the place. He puts me in the Jindal camp and Troy in the Kyl camp, but I actually have Jindal and Kyl as MY choices 1A and 1B<\/a>. I would be thrilled with either of them, and I keep pushing them equally<\/a>. (I also would be almost equally happy with Paul Ryan.)<\/p>\n

But that’s who I myself would pick, not who I predict Romney will pick. Ashton himself urges the choice of Chris Christie. Well, while in my most recent column I don’t even mention him, because the tea leaves don’t seem<\/em> to be steeping his way, I nevertheless have not withdrawn my prediction (from this column)<\/a> that Romney will eventually choose Christie:<\/p>\n

Last weekend, Andy McCarthy of National Review Online explainedcomprehensively why conservatives should see that New Jersey Gov.Chris Christie is \u201cnot one of us.\u201d Among other factors, wrote McCarthy, \u201cThe brute fact is that, while Christie is not a hardcore statist, he is a mild progressive \u2014 which is to say, a \u2018compassionate conservative\u2019 in the Bush mold who wants to make government \u2018work,\u2019 not drastically reduce its size and scope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Christie offers Romney a boatload of political advantages. First, he is perhaps the single most effective communicator anywhere in today\u2019s Republican Party. He talks in ways everybody can understand. His directness is refreshing, and it can cut through every strand of Obama\u2019s various webs of deceit. Second, Christie can excite conservatives and Tea Partiers with his in-your-face style, while providing substance that comes across to independents less as ideological than as indubitably practical. Third, he would shake up the electoral map \u2013 forcing Obama to spend far more time defending New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and probably New Hampshire, Maine, and even Connecticut than Obama otherwise would. Even if Christie doesn\u2019t succeed in helping Romney win an otherwise unreachable northeastern state, his ability to expand the playing field by his persona alone (without adding extra GOP resources) would force Obama to dilute hisresources in a way that might hold Obama back in other swing states as well.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, about the only place Christie might marginally hurt the ticket is in the Deep South \u2013 but his pugnaciousness, again, can make up for some of his ideological apostasies (in the mind of many southern voters), and it\u2019s also highly doubtful that Romney will come close to losing anywhere in the Deep South anyway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So there: No matter how you slice it, I\u2019ve got the bases covered! I\u2019m in perfect agreement with both Troy and Ashton. I feel like Abe Lincoln in the apocryphal story about two haberdashers cornering him to demand that he adjudge whose hats were of finer quality. \u201cGentleman,\u201d said the wily Lincoln, \u201cthese two hats mutually excel each other!\u201d<\/p>\n

Likewise, the picks of Kyl, Jindal, and Christie mutually excel each other (as would the choice of Kelly Ayotte).<\/p>\n

Ha!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ashton makes some interesting points. For what it’s worth, my bets are hedged all over the place. He puts me in the Jindal camp and Troy in the Kyl camp, but I actually have Jindal and Kyl as MY choices 1A and 1B. I would be thrilled with either of them, and I keep pushing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15041"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15043,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15041\/revisions\/15043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}