Halperin: McCain Pro-Choice VP Pick Would Be 'Disaster'

Don't want to take Rush's word for it?  How about Mark Halperin's? The editor of Time's "The Page" thinks the choice by John McCain of a pro-choice running mate would be nothing short of a "disaster." Halperin expressed his view during an appearance today on CNN's American Morning.

KIRAN CHETRY: What about some potential running mates for John McCain?  Because there's been a lot of talk all over talk radio.  A lot of people are saying if he tries to go with somebody who's pro-choice like a Lieberman, that that would be it for the base: a big deflation for the convention.

MARK HALPERIN: Look, so many of the people who go to the convention in St. Paul are going to be pro-life, and very strongly pro-life.  I think it would be a disaster for him to pick someone who was not in agreement with the party platform on abortion. 

View video here.

Added Halperin . . .

HALPERIN: I don't think he will in the end. In fact I think a lot of this may well be, some of my sources say, just a feint in order to set up the pick of someone like a Mitt Romney who is pro-life but has not had a long history of being pro-life, and that this focus on perhaps Joe Lieberman, perhaps someone else who's pro-choice is a way to make people who are pro-life happy with the eventual choice and to send a message that he's considering people from all parts of the party.

BONUS COVERAGE: Obama's Ego Trip?

Check out the video at the end of the linked clip [it actually aired before Halperin's appearance but I've moved it back given the focus of this item].  Obama is ostensibly explaining to a crowd what he is looking for in a vice-president [Dick Cheney need not apply.]  But tell me if you don't get the feeling that it was at least as much about Obama on an ego trip, fantasizing about occupying the Oval Office, right down to his imagining the veep addressing him as "Mr. President."

Note also Obama mentioning that he wants "somebody who in their gut knows where they came from."  The kind of person who wouldn't need to write two autobiographies to figure that out, maybe?

And—sorry Hillary—as Kiran Chetry pointed out, Obama repeatedly refers to his fantasy veep as "he."

Note also Obama's down-home pronunciation of "country."  Was it in Hawaii or at Harvard that he picked that up?  Couldn't be an affectation, could it?