McCain plans to reveal VP choice in three-state rollout Friday

By Jonathan Martin, Politico.com

DENVER

John McCain is planning to roll out his vice presidential nominee in three battleground states this weekend, with large-scale rallies planned for Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri, according to aides and advisers.

The GOP nominee-in-waiting will move to immediately change the campaign conversation from Barack Obama’s football stadium acceptance speech Thursday to the new Republican ticket, to be revealed at a noontime Friday rally in a Dayton, Ohio, basketball arena. McCain and his running mate will then travel by bus to Pennsylvania, where they’ll hold an outdoor event at a minor league baseball stadium in Washington County, just southwest of Pittsburgh. On Sunday, the duo will head to suburban St. Louis for another event to be held at a minor league baseball stadium, this one in O’Fallon, Mo.

The Missouri rally is being billed to local Republicans as something of a unity rally, since it will feature McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee — the GOP presidential finalists who effectively divided the vote three ways in the Show Me State’s Super Tuesday primary. A McCain aide warned not to read too much into McCain’s planned guests, however. 

The campaign’s leadership has imposed a strict rule on staffers to not discuss the process and have further guarded the selection by parceling out very little information.

The decision, though, has been all but made, according to one top adviser.

“If he hasn’t, he’s very darn close,” said this source.

Speculation is increasingly centered on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, although Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman remains an option and remains in the final mix.

The Democrat-turned-independent would help McCain underline his message of how he’s a different type of Republican, but the blowback from the party’s conservative base for picking a supporter of abortion rights is likely to render Lieberman an untenable choice.

As one veteran Republican who has close ties to many of the players involved put it: “After all the talk this week about the Clintons, can you imagine how happy Democrats would be about a Republican revolt in St. Paul about John McCain’s choice for VP?”

So McCain seems to be applying the Woody Hayes axiom of football to politics: Two of the three things that can happen when you put the ball in the air are negative (an incompletion or an interception).

Instead, he’s likely to make the vice presidential equivalent of a handoff up the middle.

Or, in the words of a top adviser, “a solid, safe pick.”

For months, the selection of Romney had been dismissed because of one seemingly intractable problem: McCain simply didn’t like the guy.

But according to this adviser, that has changed.

“He has really gotten to like Romney. They’ve come a long way.”

And Romney, for his part, is now saying all the right things about the man he once worked assiduously to paint as a liberal.

At a lunch with reporters here today meant to counterprogram Obama — an event that amounted to vice presidential audition — Romney struck back hard at Democratic criticism over McCain’s inability to say how many houses he owns.

"John McCain is a man who has served his nation in the military; he served it in a prison camp," Romney said. "And to suggest that because he and his wife own four homes that they use for their personal living quarters, that that somehow means he's detached from America, is simply wrong and — I think — offensive."

Romney already appears to be preparing his rebuttals for anticipated criticism should he be tapped.

Asked at the lunch how many homes he owns, Romney quipped, “I have one less than John Kerry has,” a pre-fabricated answer meant to jog memories of a Democratic politician also married to a wealthy women.

Later, at a press conference with members of Congress also in town to heap criticism on the Democrats, Romney tested an answer he’ll likely have to give repeatedly should he be tapped: how to reconcile his harsh critiques of McCain from the not-so-distant past.

"Sen. McCain and I don't agree on every issue," Romney acknowledged. “But on the major issues America faces, we agree," he added, citing taxes, trade, energy and national security."

In an implicit contrast to the nature of Joe Biden's past critique of Obama, Romney added: "But you’re never going to find somebody saying John McCain wasn’t qualified to be president of the United States."

Romney was clearly the top dog surrogate for the GOP here today, opening the press conference and then doing a round of cable news interviews afterward.

But those familiar with his thinking say he’s deeply skeptical about his own chances, and thinks McCain is likely to tap Pawlenty.

As of today, Romney had not been offered the position, an adviser said.

Romney will travel to Nevada on Wednesday to represent McCain and is planning on being in San Diego on Thursday, where he has family and a recently purchased oceanfront home.

Pawlenty, meanwhile, is to arrive in town Thursday to try out his attack dog role just as Obama prepares to accept his party’s nomination.

He is scheduled for now, though, to be back in the Twin Cities on Friday.

The high profile of both Romney and Pawlenty here has given their advocates hope that they’ll be playing on an even more prominent stage soon.

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