John McCain flirts in the mud

Something odd is going on.

The Republican nominee for president, Senator John McCain, is openly flirting with the idea of selecting a running mate who favors abortion rights.

On Saturday he will reportedly appear in Pennsylvania with pro-choice former governor Tom Ridge, a man who looked positively euphoric in a television interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday. She grilled him about his vice presidential prospects and he declined to answer, smiling like the cat that swallowed the canary.

And columnist Robert Novak reported that McCain was seriously considering asking Senator Joe Lieberman to be his running mate. Lieberman, a former Democrat, a former Democratic V.P. candidate, and a supporter of abortion rights, reportedly received a phone call last week from Karl Rove pleading with him to call Senator McCain and withdraw his name from consideration. According to the story in Politico, Senator Lieberman declined to make that call.

What makes this odd is Senator McCain's record. He is solidly, unbendingly, opposed to abortion rights. This is a subject on which he has no differences with the conservative base that distrusts him on so many other issues.

Yet he is poking his finger in the eye of conservative Republicans by advertising that he'd be perfectly willing to have a pro-choice running mate.

Why?

Maybe because Senator McCain wants to muddy up his perfect pro-life record in order to convince female voters -- like the ones who supported Hillary Clinton -- that he's just not all that serious about his anti-abortion views.

Maybe he wants to give the impression that pro-life is one of those positions Republicans have to support publicly in order to win, but -- wink-wink -- everybody knows he doesn't really feel that way. In his heart -- wink-wink -- he's really not opposed to abortion rights, but of course -- wink-wink -- he can't say that.

Pretty clever.

Senator McCain has convinced conservatives that he's seriously considering a pro-choice running mate, and you can hear them thundering in outrage from the Rush Limbaugh show to the Fox News Channel green room.

Of course, the more the conservatives pound on the table, the more the pro-choice voters will believe that McCain secretly favors abortion rights.

Senator McCain said Wednesday night he will announce the name of his running mate on Friday morning.

Even if he picks a pro-life conservative, pro-choice voters can tell each other from now until November that he almost picked Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge.

Wink-wink.

There's a price to be paid for this kind of politics. John McCain may win the election. But he'll be the one pounding the table when nobody trusts a word he says and he can't even put together enough votes to re-name a highway.


Copyright 2008

.