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McCain Running Mate: He Wants Ridge But Ridge Says No?

Posted by PATRICK EDABURN in Politics.
Aug 27th, 2008 | Comments

As we are focused on the Democratic convention, I thought it might be worth remembering that Senator McCain is expected to unveil his VP choice sometime this week. Despite rumors of a Thursday announcement, I think he will wait till Friday.

However, in terms of the VP search, I have been hearing some rumors that are pretty interesting. At the risk of sounding like a much bigger journalist than I really am, I will have to take the 5th when it comes to revealing the sources but I can tell you that this news comes from an unnamed source close to Ridge.

The report is that, for some time now, McCain has settled on former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge as his top choice for the VP spot. The selection of Joe Biden would only seem to re-enforce this determination. McCain the maverick has said he does not care if the hard right dislikes Ridge for his pro-choice views.

However, the bump in the road seems to be Ridge himself. Ridge has said that he does not want to take the VP spot because he wants to spend more time with his family. Normally this is a political dodge but in this case I suspect it is true.

He was in Congress, then Governor and then Homeland Security head for over 20 years and has passed on other political opportunities to stay at home.

StockBoySF

Patrick, very interesting... but I tend to disagree with this statement, "Ridge has said that he does not want to take the VP spot because he wants to spend more time with his family. Normally this is a political dodge but in this case I suspect it is true."

Ridge has been on McCain's VP list from the beginning. I think that if Ridge did not want to be considered for the VP slot he would have told McCain sooner, rather than go through the vetting process.... My sense is that Ridge has only recently decided (maybe because of Obama's choice of Biden for VP, since that's the most significant change lately?) not to be on the Republican ticket.

Rudi

Maybe Ridge is backing out because the far Right is hijacking McCain and the GOP platform. This from Andrew Sullivan:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily...
The platform for the GOP will now include a total ban on even private funding for embryonic stem cell research:

elrod

Ridge is pro-choice. That won't fly.

It'll be Romney or Pawlenty.

StockBoySF

I think Pawlenty.

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