The Buzz

• The Veepstakes for both candidates has officially hit its stride as this hyper-speed campaign rolls on. What was once penciled in automatically every year for convention week or thereabouts has shifted weeks earlier this year, with talk heating up about imminent picks on both sides. But, contrary to what we were told last week, it is the Obama campaign that has now rushed to the forefront of the Veep process with a flurry of activity around his impending choice that threatens to again upstage John McCain and what had been planned as a pre-Olympcs announcement for his running mate. But Obama has hit the ground running after arriving back in the U.S. following his overseas trip, visiting with his top Veep vetters and campaign advisers instructing staffers to move the vetting process into high speed on a select number of contenders. What appears to be the final short list for Obama’s Veep looks like this: VA Gov. Tim Kaine up top, followed by Evan Bayh and Joe Biden. A scattering of names once thought to be the core group of candidates - Hillary, Sam Nunn, etc. - have been tossed aside for now, waiting for either a last-minute implosion from the final three or a change of heart from Obama himself.

• About Hillary as Obama’s Veep: NYT’s Adam Nagourney delves further into that faint possibility and decides that it is basically an impossibility at this late stage in the Veepstakes. Despite continued resistance from rabid Hillary supporters and the reluctance of her huge donor base to give the Obama campaign any of their cash unless HRC gets more “respect,” the initial wave of deafening buzz that Hillary just had to be on the fall ticket has subsided with every new poll that shows Hillary’s base warming to Obama and the realization that choosing Hillary just brings too much unwanted and unnecessary baggage to the campaign - like Bill. So where’s the proof that Hillary’s Veep dream has faded? Obama staffers haven’t asked for any more documents from her to go towards the vetting process and there has virtually no communication between Hillary and her people and Obama or his campaign about the prospect of a joint ticket. This just isn’t going to happen.

• But McCain;s search for a running mate hasn’t completely skulked out of the news. A timetable is still set within the campaign to name a Veep before the opening ceremonies in Beijing, meaning the only name that appears possible to finish vetting and putting the final touches in place for must be Romney. Conventional wisdom has the variety of last-second names thrown out by the McCain camp - Jindal, John Thune, Rob Portman, etc. - are simply smoke screens aimed to keep nerves on edge regarding the eventual choice (that would be Mitt). But there is still some simmering resentment over Romney emanating from some unlikely locales. The evangelical community has especially hit back hard on a potential McCain-Romney ticket, warning the GOP and its nominee that such a fall ticket would make it very hard to drum up grass roots excitement in the evangelical community so important to Republican success in the presidential race and beyond. Romney’s mixed record on social issues like abortion and gay marriage (disregarding his Right Wing screeds during the primary) is a particular sore spot - and then there’s the whole Mormon thing. The Religious Right won;t admit it, but Mitt’s choice of religion is a top worry among their followers, especially in some of the rural red states that Obama could very well put into play come November. Add to that a scathing editorial in the Wall Street Journal condemning Romney’s universal health care plan in Massachusetts, and you get some nasty crunch time concerns for the vetters and advisers at McCain HQ.

• Now its once again time for McCain to become the unlucky candidate who commits the flip-flop du jour, leaving Obama’s overseas wiggles in the dust. McCain broke the conservative code when he told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that “there is nothing that’s off the table” when it came to increasing the payroll tax to keep Social Security solvent. Ohhhh…. Naturally, this brought a swift attack from the anti-tax Club For Growth. -

On Sunday, on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, McCain said this about a payroll tax increase: “There is nothing that’s off the table. I have my positions, and I’ll articulate them. But nothing’s off the table. I don’t want tax increases. But that doesn’t mean that anything is off the table.”

The conservative, or rather anti-tax, Club for Growth was quick to pounce, with an open letter to the senior senator from Arizona calling his comments “shocking, because you have been adamant in your opposition to raising taxes under any circumstances.“

• We’re a long way from those early postulations that Mike Huckabee could be a good running mate for McCain. Now a well-paid Fox News “political analyst.” Huck is free to sound of on the McCain campaign’s missteps and misfires. He let ‘er rip on FNC recently. 

What is wrong with the McCain campaign?

HUCKABEE: Well, I think he missed an opportunity. Instead of having some fun with it and showing sort of a buoyant ‘hey, do what you’ve got to do, let Obama go play basketball, I’m solving problems.’ Do it with tongue and cheek.

Frankly, I thought he looked more like Bob Dole in the last days of the 1996 campaign saying ‘look at the record, look at the record,’ and there was some anger and sense of frustration there.

He shouldn’t show that. He needs to show that nothing is getting to him, it’s rolling off his back, and I think he missed an opportunity to do that last week.

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