Wednesday Open Thread [5.9.12]

“I have a mindset that says bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.” — Indiana U.S. Senate nominee Richard Mourdock (R), quoted by Politico.

Some of us have known that was the Republican view for some time. Perhaps the media and certain Democrats (cough cough Carper Coons Carney) can finally wake up to it.

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A donor to former John Edwards’ 2008 presidential campaign testified that he “steered Barack Obama’s campaign away from considering Edwards as a potential running mate or Cabinet member because of Edwards’ affair with Rielle Hunter,” NBC News report. I never got the sense that Edwards was being considered for VP or anything else. At the time, Edwards was an afterthought and you could see that Obama did not like him, either personally or politically.

In fact, if you read Game Change, Edwards spent months after his withdrawal from the race in late January 2008 literally begging Obama to have him as either Attorney General or VP in exchange for his endorsement. It was both funny and sad.

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LOL:

Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as The Dictator, endorsed Mitt Romney at a mock press conference:

“I give my full support to Mitchell Romney. He has the makings of a great dictator. He is incredibly wealthy, but pays no taxes. And it’s not much of a leap to go from firing people to firing squads, and from putting pets on the top of a car to putting political dissidents on top of them.”

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National Review: “The conventional wisdom about Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential short list, according to a handful of Romney insiders, may be wrong. Instead of picking a straitlaced Midwestern senator such as Ohio’s Rob Portman, or an outspoken northeastern Republican governor such as Chris Christie, there is a chance Romney will tap an evangelical from the South. And the name on the lips of Romney friends and supporters isn’t a rising southern senator or a current Dixie governor. He has been out of office for five years, resides on a beach in the Florida panhandle, and hosts a television show. In other words, Mike Huckabee, the bass-guitar-playing former governor.”

We are going to be driven insane by the Veepstakes. The only thing I care about is when Romney will announce his choice. Will he pull a McCain and announce it as close to the GOP convention as possible? Probably not. For 2 reasons. First, Romney will need something newsworthy during the summer months. It is a long time until the GOP convention on August 27. Second, this time, the GOP convention is before the Democratic one, because the incumbent party always goes last. One of the reasons McCain waited was until the Friday before his convention (which was also the day after Obama’s acceptance speech), was to stop any momentum Obama had coming out of the convention. And it worked. But Romney does not have that option this time, so he might as well announce the VP choice earlier to give him a boost.