The Rob Portman for VP boomlet begins to take shape, and once it becomes a bandwagon, it won't be stopped

Sen. Rob Portman and Sen. Ron Wyden Introduce Bill to Help Lower Medicare Costs by Keeping Seniors Healthy. March 29, 2012.

http://youtu.be/r51NayIBBVc

Personally, despite the avalanche of media stories we've seen in South Florida for months exploring and positing various positives and negatives about Marco Rubio, I've thought that Ohio senator and former OMB chief Rob Portman would be the GOP pick for Vice President for probably about eight months, which is part of the reason why I started a subscription to his YouTube Channel around then, and as you may've surmised, the video above is the fruit of that tree.

Over the weekend, when reading what was new at The National Journal, a magazine that, as I've noted before here, I first became aware of while attending IU, I came across this very persuasive column by Major Garrett making some of the same points that I've been making in conversations for months down here, a few of which are precisely why Rubio is not as qualified right now.

Despite what you may start hearing from the Mainstream Media about Mitt Romney looking to protect his right-flank by choosing one of two former governors, it won't be either Tim Pawlenty or Mike Huckabee, because in my opinion, neither has the ability to move a sufficient number of the tens of thousands of college-educated Independent voters in North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania who are THE voters who will decide November's election.

They are more interested in the economy, cutting government spending and creating jobs than they are in social issues, and Rob Portman is someone whose résumé and personality will appeal to them, especially the entrepreneurs who genuinely want meaningful health care reform, but NOT the sort of over-reach and top-down government tyranny of Obamacare, which will be a job-killer.

The National Journal

ALL POWERS

Rob Portman's the One

Why I think the senator from Ohio is going to be the veep nominee.

By Major Garrett

Updated: April 5, 2012  2:45 p.m. 

April 4, 2012  6:00 a.m.

Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee, Wisconsin sealed the deal, and he will pick Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio as his running mate.

Write it down. And harangue me mercilessly this summer if I am wrong.

Column writing, I have learned, is part provocation and part explanation.

There is nothing provocative about declaring that Portman will be Romney's running mate, except that it hasn't happened and I don't know it an as absolute fact.

But everything tells me it will be so.

Read the rest of the column at:

http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/all-powers/rob-portman-s-the-one-20120404

-----

http://twitter.com/#!/MajoratNJ

http://www.youtube.com/user/SenRobPortman

Hotline TV: Blanche Lincoln's Senate campaign ad; "Never in the history of Arkansas politics has someone won by proclaiming that they're liberal"

Above. my license to practice politics in Arkansas. And to make it easier for me to flash my credentials, I had it made into a key chain! License is courtesy of my dear friend Shannon, a beautiful multi-talented dynamo from a town called Hope. Yes, THAT Hope.
(Her mother grew-up across the street from Bill Clinton.)

Hotline TV, May 4, 2010:
NAME DROPPING: Primary Endorsements, Bandwagon & AR SEN Ad



http://www.youtube.com/user/HotlineTV http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/

I've long felt that Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln was the perfect antidote to almost everything negative I ever saw on Capitol Hill in my many years in Washington: a bright and thoughtful person who got so fed-up with the status quo and the sinking feeling that her own viewpoint was getting short shrift, that she decided to do something both RISKY and POSITIVE about it.
She ran against her former boss -and beat- Beryl Anthony, a popular incumbent Democratic Arkansas congressman in the primary!

In 1998 she was elected to the U.S. Senate, re-elected in 2004, and now faces national liberal poster boy Bill Halter, the Arkansas Lieutenant Governor, for the Democratic nomination, with the primary scheduled for May 18. Halter is beloved in the liberal blogging community -by Ron Gunzburger, for instance- despite the large number of jobs he has sent overseas.



Of course, for all their talk about the common man, the vast majority of Halter's supporters don't actually know anyone in Arkansas whose job went overseas, so they play dumb and instead excoriate Lincoln for not being more liberal in a coal-dependent state that doesn't value either extremist politicians or outsiders telling them what's what and who to vote for.

It's a state that I first visited when I was a kid growing-up in Memphis, but even then, I couldn't help but notice the overwhelmingly friendliness and kindness of the people I met, who'd offer to help you before you ever thought to ask.
Every trip back there has been just like that.
And it's so beautiful, too, in a way that people who have always lived on the East Coast or South Florida can't imagine.

It's also a state where the friendly people who run the charities and civic groups, and who make sure that the ball fields are manicured on weekends for their sons and daughters to play baseball or softball on, are strongly against Obamacare and favors its repeal, and as Rasmussen Reports details below, "By a 61% to 31% margin, Arkansas voters say their views on today’s major issues are more in line with those of the average Tea Party member than with the views of President Obama."

Though I disagree with her position on Obamacare, in every other way, Blanche Lincoln has shown thru her words and actions that she's a true profile in courage, the likes of which does not currently exist in either Broward or Miami-Dade. As is patently obvious when we open the local newspaper or turn on the local news.
http://lincoln.senate.gov/

Which is to say that she's the polar opposite of an Ilene Lieberman, who seems incapable of not always thinking about how she, her husband and their pals can benefit from the existing political system that's riddled with loopholes which someone as smart as her has proven quite adept at manipulating, and not particularly interested in eliminating. Not that Mitch Caesar cares about that, either.
------------------------

Rasmussen Reports
Election 2010: Arkansas Senate

Arkansas Senate: Lincoln’s Support Continues to Slide

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/arkansas/election_2010_arkansas_senate

U.S. News & World Report
http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2010/03/24/demint-lincoln-and-the-perils-of-progressive-purity-politics.html

DeMint, Lincoln, and the Perils of Progressive Purity Politics-
By Robert Schlesinger

Posted March 24, 2010