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McCain VP Sweepstakes Final Four!

Here are the results from the Elite Eight, from the email sent by CQ Politics:

More than 14,000 votes have been cast and competition is getting intense. The Elite Eight saw our most competitive races yet, with Rob Portman barely edging Charlie Crist, winning by a mere 4 votes:

* Mike Huckabee (58%) vs. Mark Sanford (41%)
* Tim Pawlenty (59%) vs. Kay Bailey Hutchison (40%)
* Sarah Palin (54%) vs. Bobby Jindal (45%)
* Rob Portman (50%) vs. Charlie Crist (49%)

Bad call on Huckabee vs. Sanford from the voters, if you ask me. On this round, I’m going with Pawlenty over Huckabee and Portman over Palin. If my picks get through, I’ll go for Portman over Pawlenty as well.

I’ll find the links to the case(s) for Rob Portman and add them here later. Or you could just google it yourself. ;-P The Wall Street Journal has had stuff, just off the top of my head - and I’m personally angling for a conservative economist. YMMV. Not that I’m against Sarah Palin (or Pawlenty); she’s just too new (like Bobby Jindal), too unknown, and she’s got her hands full right now. Don’t just pick her because she’s got ovaries, either - people who vote based on identity politics don’t vote Republican anyway. Picking an unknown because of gender looks like pandering, and it’s just pointless. She will, of course, be an excellent candidate in the future, after a few more years of experience.

Dumbest Veepstakes Ever?

McCain Veepstakes at Salon.com. Shocking, I know. Choose how the candidate parts his or her hair carefully! (Idiots!) I got Kay Bailey Hutchison, oddly enough (I told you this quiz was silly), but Jeb was in my top 3. woot!

Here’s Obama’s veepstakes. My result was Senator Bill Nelson for him and Hillary’s pointless veepstakes. No surprise there - none of the Salon’s lib readers ended up with him on Obama’s veepstakes, although 1% did on Hillary’s. LOL.

So predictable that lefty Salon would have a vapid veepstakes to accompany their mindless adoration of a vapid candidate. LOL.

VP Madness Round 3 - The Elite Eight

More than 10,000 votes have been cast and the Elite Eight has emerged:

* Mike Huckabee (54%) vs. Condoleezza Rice (45%)
* Mark Sanford (53%) vs. Mitt Romney (46%)
* Tim Pawlenty (55%) vs. Colin Powell (44%)
* Kay Bailey Hutchison (52%) vs. Tom Ridge (47%)
* Sarah Palin (62%) vs. Sam Brownback (37%)
* Bobby Jindal (52%) vs. Michael Steele (47%)
* Rob Portman (60%) vs. Joe Lieberman (39%)
* Charlie Crist (60%) vs. John Thune (39%)

Make your picks (mine are in boldface):

* Huckabee vs. Sanford
* Pawlenty vs. Hutchison
* Palin vs. Jindal
* Portman vs. Crist

CQ Politics VP Madness Round 2

CQ Politics has Round 2 of VP Madness up–you’ve got until Monday to get your picks in. Here’s how it looks after Round One:

*click*

Can’t say I agree with ALL of those picks, but whatever. ;-)

(I almost missed this, buried beneath 8000 other emails in my inbox - as it is, it came in two days ago.)

CQ Politics: McCain VP Madness

From Congressional Quarterly, vice-presidential pick brackets for politics geeks! :D

Who should be John McCain’s running mate? In our own version of the March Madness brackets, our team of political experts selected 32 possible nominees. We took into account many of the factors McCain will likely consider, such as national prominence, geographical and ideological balance, fundraising prowess, political strengths and fatal flaws. Now it’s up to you to decide who will advance to face each other in the next round. The winner will be revealed May 22. You’ll have a chance to weigh in on the Democratic ticket once the nominee is set.

Click to fill out a bracket, and you can also see how they came up with the picks (video).

UPDATE: If you can’t get enough of the speculation about McCain’s VP pick (which I can’t imagine will come before the Dems pick theirs), you can follow all the buzz at VP Watch, a blog run by the Club for Growth. Here’s a VP poll at ABC News found at VP Watch. Naturally, I ended up picking the guy with the fewest votes (Chris Cox). Oh well, nobody knows who he is, I guess.

(Cross-posted at McCain Blogs)