McCain's Pro-Choice Kabuki

Everybody is all atwitter at the idea that McCain might pick a pro-choice figure to be his number two. I can’t begin to say how unlikely I find this kind of talk. It’s kind of absurd on the face of it. After McCain has spent so much time reversing himself on so many issues important to the conservative base – voting against his own immigration reform bill, reversing on off-shore oil drilling – it’s unthinkable he’d endanger all that goodwill by picking a pro-choice candidate – especially not after his staunchly pro-life performance at Saddleback.

No, I think a reader over at Marc Ambinder’s blog has it right: McCain is simply throwing this out there so that the media will report it and it will further the idea among independents and weakly aligned Democrats that he’d consider a pro-choice candidate. McCain is far more conservative than he’s public image implies, and this is part of shoring up that image. All of this discussion is simply to get the media to play further into McCain’s “maverick” image.