Choosing a Vice Presidential Nominee -- Will Romney Make His Announcement Before the RNC?
Who will be Mitt Romney’s running mate? That’s the question on many minds as the 2012 presidential election inches closer. While Romney and those he is said to be vetting have refused to comment on the process, today’s Fox News Sunday panel had their own speculations about how soon someone will be chosen and more importantly, who it will be.
The New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny said that Republicans inside the campaign who are making the case to decide on a vice presidential nominee early, is that it would help Mitt Romney when he’s traveling around the country doing fundraisers and making news. Zeleny observed that, “As we’ve seen right now, Governor Romney’s not doing that much campaigning, he usually has one event a day. And the Obama administration, the vice president, the cabinet members, other people, they’re really outflanking them in terms of on the road, local news coverage.”
The downside to announcing the VP early, according to Fred Barnes from The Weekly Standard, is
that “if you announce it now or over the next week and a half or so before he goes on his trip to the Olympics and to Israel and to Poland, what’s going to happen with that trip which is a very important one for Romney … It’ll get snowed under, overshadowed by whoever his vice presidential pick is.”
While Barnes speculates that Romney will make the anticipated announcement before the RNC, Juan Williams thinks it’d be better to wait until Tampa because “what is the drama at the conventions anyway? And right now the big ticket would be if he introduced his VP selection to some hoopla.”
Williams went on to say, “The problem is he’s just having a bad time, Mr. Romney is, and this week the reason that they put out Condoleezza Rice … at just the juncture when I think it was in their best interest to change the conversation.”
Watch the segment below to see what the panel thinks of the possible Republican VP choices:
