Will He Really Do It?

The state of Darth Queeg's veep mind a week ago:

I've been talking to more people about the veep thing, and the picture I get is this:  McCain is sitting in front of a console with a switch with two positions: GAMBLE and PLAY IT SAFE.  If he moves the switch to GAMBLE, he picks Lieberman.  If he moves it to PLAY IT SAFE, he picks Pawlenty.  It seems increasingly clear that a Tom Ridge gamble doesn't make a lot of sense, and a Mitt Romney choice isn't a big gamble, but it isn't really safe either.

By all reports, there hasn't been any change in Maverick's grey matter since then.  In just the past twenty-four hours I've seen stories talking up (and down) Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (as an identity politics play for disgruntled Hillarynistas), ex-Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele (as an identity politics counter to Caesar Barackius), Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor (as the Beav to, um, Grandpa Cleaver, I guess - Governor Pawlenty, BTW, would be cast in the role of big brother Wally), Romney again (as the bait for a bazillion classist and/or anti-Mormon attacks), and - be still my enlarged heart, could it really be? - Ready Freddie:

What better way to assure the base of McCain’s pro-life record and shore up the jitters his campaign has been giving the party lately with all this pro-choice VP talk than to tap Fred Thompson, the guy endorsed by National Right to Life?

And as for the “wrench” that is Biden in McCain’s hunt for a VP, how about the intellectual heavyweight that is Senator Thompson? Thompson has been dealing in and discussing foreign relations for roughly the last thirty years. He may not have chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as Biden does, but he’s served as special council to it and is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He’s shown plenty of intellectual sharpness in his time as a radio analyst and editorial writer (free of plagarism!), not to mention the times he cleaned up in the Republican primary debates and brought clarity, focus, and gravitas to the crowded stage and networks’ chaotic, sophomoric handling of the debates. Scott Ott of Scrappleface once described Thompson, the overwhelming favorite of the conservative blogosphere, quite well: “ideological gravitas behemoth”...

Thompson has fought corruption (sent a Tennessee governor to jail as a lawyer), devoted much of his time in the Senate to combating wasteful spending, and even is a little mavericky himself from time to time, voting not to impeach Clinton in 1999, giving network anchors hell quite often early this year, and refusing to do hand shows for debate moderators.

Plus, there is absolutely NO clips from the Republican debates this cycle of Thompson criticizing McCain. Disagreeing maybe once or twice, but nothing that could even come close to helping Obama make an ad like this.

McCain rolling out Fred tomorrow (or tonight) would accomplish precisely what he needs (and presumeably wants) to accomplish with his running mate announcement: seal the deal with the GOP base, rev up the conservative grassroots for the fall home stretch, and not just suck all the oxygen out of Barack Obama's ludicrous attempt at transfigurating Invesco Field into Mt. Sinai, but throw it into even starker and more ridiculous contrast with FDT's aforementioned steroidal gravitas and Reaganesque balloon-puncturing wry wit.  Seriously, can't you just picture the Thompson-Biden veep debate?  To the degree that anybody buys the idea of Slow Joe being a "home run" veep pick for Lucifer, wouldn't Fred by the absolute perfect nemesis for it?

What are the drawbacks?  Fred's "vast, lucrative" lobbying career that was so vast and lucrative that he became an actor instead, put alongside the Donk ticket, one half of which personifies the "culture of corruption" and the other of whom wrote the book on hypocritizing it?  His Law & Order (and Hunt For Red October) celebrity, which pales besides Obama's megalomania and is vastly outweighed by all the substance, character, and intellectual heft of which The One is utterly bereft?

Hell, adding Fred to the ticket might even be enough to bring yours truly reluctantly around to within nose-holding range of hanging the chad for the Sith Master after all.

But I can't quite bring myself to place that much (okay, any) faith in the man who has been the Benedict Arnold of the GOP for the past decade.  Despite doing pretty much everything right over the course of the summer, despite playing the vain, callow Democrat nominee like a ten-cent flute via his brilliant attack ads belittling his empty-headed, radicalism-addled messiah complex that goaded Barry into burying himself time and again, despite heroically restraining his own "maverick" reflex and not doing anything much to gratuitously thumb conservatives in the eye, despite having sufficiently tamed the base to leave the party platform doors open for all kinds of post-inauguration maverickiness, I just can't shake the cynical suspicion that he'll scratch that contrarian itch too soon.

Really, I'm on the fence.  On the one hand, I assume that McCain actually does want to win this election.  Taking that as a given, the chief prerequisite for said victory is a unified, energized, excited Republican base.  There is no more fundamentally base-encouraging/discouraging decision any nominee makes than his/her choice of running mate.  Consequently, logic and common sense dictate that McCain will choose a veep who at the very least will, as it says in the Hippocratic Oath, "first, do no harm".  In that regard, Eric Cantor would be, in baseball terms, a single, Tim Pawlenty a double, Mitt Romney a triple, and Fred Thompson, of course, an upper-deck grand slam.  But, however much of a "maverick" Lord Queeg may be, he's not an idiot.  Against all expectations, he actually has a serious shot at becoming the next president.  Accordingly, he'll do what he has to do now to win, and THEN he'll stick it to the base for the next four years.

On the other hand rests the belief that Sailor just can't help himself.  Convinced that GOPers are so terrified of an Obama presidency that they'll stick with him no matter what he does, he'll indulge in his own brand of trademark arrogance and try to one-up Barry's "Super Bowl halftime show without the game" by trumping Senator Hairplugs with "Joementum".

It'd be the ultimate betrayal; it'd be the ultimate mavericky orgasm; it'd be the ultimate double-middle-finger salute to the Right he's been shafting all these years.

And it'd be the GOP Waterloo:

With John McCain weighing a running mate who supports abortion rights, a revolt is brewing among his conservative base that includes a walkout at the Republican National Convention next week and a huge battle on the floor—especially if he selects Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman.

In addition to the expected brawl at the convention, major conservative donors who have planned to bankroll issue-oriented advertising and other grassroots efforts directed at social conservatives are putting their work on hold and will withdraw financial support, sources tell ABC News.

One conservative strategist characterized the prospect of a VP who supports abortion rights as a “disaster” for the Republican Party — and said selecting Lieberman would cost McCain the election…

One possible strategy is a revolt by some of the eighteen state delegations who supported either Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee — and who have not yet turned over to McCain.

Those delegations could — and sources say, likely would – revolt against Leiberman and put in their own recommendation. In the nomination process, a candidate needs five delegations supporting the nomination.

How ironic would it be that after so many false Enemy Media depictions of quadrennial Republican convention "fractures on the abortion issue," their memeical stopped clock would finally be right?  And how tragic, and unpardonably stupid, would it be for the GOP nominee to knowingly and willfully throw away the election - and show himself to be as "not ready to lead" as the naif opponent whose "rookieness" he's been ridiculing all summer?

That's why I'm sticking with my prediction of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as McCain's veep.  Huck finished second in the nominating race (mainly by not getting out when the rest of the field did, not unlike Opie Edwards on the Donk side four years ago), he and Sailor always got along (so much so that they seemed to me to have been in cahoots against Romney), he's "great with the media" (something McCain also cultivates), he's a fellow RINO (thus scratching the "maverick" itch), BUT - he's pro-life (thus splitting evangelicals off from the rest of the Right and screwing the rest)!

It'd be the best of both worlds.

I still think it'd cost McCain the election.  But the meltdown wouldn't be as spectacular as a Lieberman roll-out would ignite.  And the fall death march to electoral decimation would at least sport an overabundance of gallows humor.

We'll find out tomorrow morning, or even tonight.

If I'm right, trust me, you'll know it.

UPDATE: "Coal in the stocking" of huckers everywhere or "biggest head fake evah"?