I think one of the most intriguing questions still left unanswered is whether McCain will pick someone left of him or right of him.
Most of the stronger candidates are left of him -- Christine Todd Whitman, Olympia Snowe, Tom Ridge, Joe Lieberman, Rudy Giuliani, Jodi Rell, Kay Bailey Hutchison -- but they will all, to varying degrees, be an affront to the stern unforgiving Republican base.
Choosing one of the right-of-McCain candidates -- notably Huckabee and Rick Perry of Texas -- would likely result in kissing the Independents and moderate Republicans good-bye. McCain is already pushing himself off-center on numerous issues, so picking someone to the right will irretrievably tilt the whole ticket that direction.
The thing with Romney is that he moves around so much it's difficult to pin him down as either left-of or right-of-McCain. In any event, Mitt Romney will start running for President on November 5th, 2008. If McCain wins, he'll morph into a right-winger. If Obama wins, he'll morph into a left-winger. Say what you will about him, but Mitt has the survival instincts of a chameleon. I think McCain even realizes that if he selects Romney as his VP, and they win, Romney will see it as nothing more than a springboard to 2012. This will piss McCain off to no end.
Lindsey Graham is McCain's separated-at-birth ideological twin, and that's probably why the two of them love each other so much. But the problem is that they are so similar that there's no contrast between the two, no extension one way or the other that might appeal to the right or to the left. Instead, if McCain wins look for Graham to be either Chief of Staff or Secretary of State. Or Brokeback lover.
The five young governors on McCain's long list of VP candidates -- Charlie Crist of Florida, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Matt Blunt of Missouri, and Bobby Jindal of Louisana -- all have convincing conservative credentials that would probably make them palatable to the right wing, while their youth and good looks can still be appealing to the sort of non-principled Independents who can be swayed by that sort of nonsense.
Above all, though, I think the Republicans need to make a concerted effort to start promoting their young up-and-coming governors and congressmen simply because the Republican brand has been tarnished so badly they are in desperate need of a new image projecting rebirth and new growth.
As state executives these five young governors have all been able to keep a relatively immune distance from the toxic Bush White House and subsequently can't be accused of directly supporting Bush's failed ideologically myopic policies. The others aren't so lucky. Every Republican in Congress can be intrinsically tied to having empowered and/or supported Bush at every possible turn. And anyone having anything to do with the Bush Administration will be toxic for some time to come, including Rice, so anyone having the bad luck of being picked to be groomed by the Administration will be off-radar for years, maybe forever.
This is unfortunate for the Republicans. After eight years in the White House you should expect quite a bit of collateral advancement. Even Nixon's White House spit out Rumsfeld and Cheney. But there will be nobody crawling out from underneath the Bush White House with their political credibility intact. Those who don't go to jail will likely go into hiding.
This year will be another difficult year for the Republicans in the voting booth, and 2010 promises to be yet another one where they could conceivably lose 5 or 6 more Senate seats which would put them below 40, making them absolutely powerless to stop the Democrats from doing whatever they want ramping up to the 2012 elections. The Republicans really need to start preparing themselves for 2012, and they can start by giving national recognition to the likes of these five young reasonably competent and accomplished governors. But much more than that, they need to start trolling immediately for state and local candidates who can start competing against progressively ingrained Democratic candidates, many who were elected to Congress in 2006, and many more who will be elected in 2008 and 2010, even in increasingly competitive Red states.
As it is now, there are only 22 Republican governors and it looks likely they will also be losing Missouri's Governor's mansion in 2008. In 2010, 15 Republican governorships will be up for election, and seven of those sitting governors are bound by term limits to move on (including Arnie in California and Sanford in South Carolina) making their open seats much more accessible to Democratic challengers. Two more are up in 2011: Jindal in Louisiana and another McCain long-lister, Haley Barbour in Mississippi. (Barbour is on term limits and will have to find another job.) This could be a prime opportunity to start promoting Republican Attorneys General, mayors and state legislators into more nationally visible positions. Or they could fall deeper into the hole by staying ideologically rigid during what might very well be a transformative Obama Administration. (In all fairness, the Democrats will have 21 governorships up for election in 2010, 11 of which are bound by term limits, including Sebelius in Kansas, Napolitano in Arizona, Granholm in Michigan, Richardson in New Mexico, Rendell in Pennsylvania, and Kulongoski in Oregon.)
All that said, to really stage an effective political comback the Republicans must be more flexible in addressing the sort of hot-button issues that are important to women, young voters and racial minorities, and this starts with taking more moderate positions on choice, gay rights and immigration. And they will never be able to compete in another national election without improving their appeal to Hispanics and African-Americans. A white-male well-to-do base will only take you so far in an increasingly diverse population.
The good news for the Republicans is that Biden will probably be too old to run for president in 2016 -- he'll be 74, or two years older than John McCain is now. Provided Obama wins in 2008, and again in 2012, if the Republicans play it right they could have a lot of good-looking candidates just coming into their political prime in 2016. Without a sitting incumbent VP in the race, 2016 will be much like 2008. Wide open.