McCain Timing VP Pick To Distract From Bush Speech?

[babylonsister]

http://www.jedreport.com/2008/08/mccain-timing-v.html

McCain Timing VP Pick To Distract From Bush Speech?

Here's how freaked out John McCain is about being associated with George W. Bush: according to William Kristol (not always the best source, to put it mildly), McCain is going to wait to pick his VP until the Tuesday of the GOP convention in a desperate effort to get people to forget about Bush's prime time convention keynote on Monday.

Without doubt, at some point during Bush's speech, some McCain operative is going to leak the name of McCain's pick to FOX News (or perhaps ABC).

On the surface this seems like a good strategy, but like all strategies, it has a weakness. In this case, the strategy's weakness is that there's nothing at all subtle about what McCain is trying to do: he's taking the single most newsworthy thing his campaign will do (at least until the debates) and using it to try to distract attention from his association with Bush.

The countermeasure is obvious: Democrats need to point out that the reason why McCain is dragging his feet is because he wants to find something -- anything -- that will trump Bush's convention speech.

[stray cat]

1. Bush is speaking at the convention - how about Cheney too?

[bahrbearian]

2. Well chimpy has to have a place to sit.

and Its always on Snarlys lap.

[bunnies]

3. Cheney is speaking on Monday.

Just announced today! :bounce:

[Mira]

6. My visuals

:puke: :popcorn: :dilemma: :puke:

[bunnies]

7. allow me to add one...

:beer: <---- thats what I'll be doing.

Which will probably lead to this: :argh:

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. Both are speaking now, it was revealed today that Cheney would too .

Talk about two huge albatrosses around McCain's neck.

[babylonsister]

5. They both are:

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/08/08/the-gop-s-must-miss-tv.aspx

The GOP's Must-Miss TV

The McCain campaign is clearly praying no one watches the first night of the Republican convention, since, according to Politico's Jonathan Martin, that's when Bush and Cheney will be speaking. You think Steve Schmidt et al are hoping the Tennessee-UCLA game on September 1 is a barn burner?

[Renew Deal]

8. I don't think this is a particularly good strategy, but he doesn't have many options.

He needs a surrogate, but he wants to pick after Obama. That means that if Obama waits until the convention, McCain essentially needs to do the same thing. He can step on the Dem convention, but that wouldn't be so smart.