As Obama decides when to announce his pick, McCain is having problems picking at all. Mainly because the people he'd prefer to choose - Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman - are pro-choice (McCain himself is solidly anti-abortion). The sheer all-or-nothing rigidity of the party's pro-life constituency is brought home by this passage (remember, we're talking about a person who might have second-hand influence on abortion policy if McCain dies/retires before the end of his term, and if this person is president when a Supreme Court vacancy arises, and if that person then decides not to take the views of this powerful wing of the party into account...):
Still, Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who is a close friend and traveling companion of Mr. McCain, raised the idea of a running mate who supports abortion rights last week when Mr. McCain met with social conservatives in Birmingham, Mich. Mr. Graham asked if the group would rather have a running mate who opposed abortion but caused the Republicans to lose or a running mate who supported abortion rights and caused the party to win, recalled James Muffett, a social conservative who attended the meeting. Quite a few people, said Mr. Muffett, said they preferred to lose.
(my italics)
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