The Note: At the Ridge

The Note: As Russia rages, McCain plays dangerous game with VP choice.

ByABC News
August 14, 2008, 10:05 AM

August 14, 2008 -- Now that Paris and Britney have been replaced by Vladimir and Dmitry, things look very serious for Sen. Barack Obama in a race that's seen its landscape shift faster than shaved ice melts in the Kailua sun.

(If he could only figure out that Hillary thing before we get to Denver . . . )

(And the poll we've all been waiting for has arrived -- the one that declares the race just about even.)

Yet on the home front, it's Sen. John McCain who's playing a dangerous game, even while he has the field all to himself.

While he's busy trying not to reignite the Cold War, is he restarting a GOP civil war? (And might a war hero be ready to enter Obamaland -- though not, he says at the convention.)

It's easy to forget, amid the Democratic discord, the difficulty with which so many key Republican players swallowed the notion of a McCain nomination.

And they have this to chew on now: "I think that the pro-life position is one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party," McCain tells The Weekly Standard's Stephen F. Hayes. "And I also feel that -- and I'm not trying to equivocate here -- that Americans want us to work together. You know, Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens to be pro-choice. And I don't think that that would necessarily rule Tom Ridge out."

Actually, he is trying to equivocate -- and just maybe lay the groundwork for the pick he really wants to make. He'd love to capture some of those disaffected Clinton supporters, sure -- but does he want to enrage the party base at the very moment that GOPers are starting to believe he may have a chance?

"Either Ridge or [Sen. Joe] Lieberman would be a 'transformative' VP pick who could help open up the Republican Party and deliver moderate voters and Independents, some McCain advisers believe. McCain is seriously weighing that option, sources say," ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg reports. "But it's a tough calculus: A pro-choice nominee would infuriate the anti-abortion element of the conservative base and potentially be a bitter divorce from the Religious Right."

The party has rallied behind McCain -- but there's work that's never really done. The reaction is key -- and McCain, while always liable to go his own way, will be listening.

"In opening up the possibility of choosing a pro-choice nominee just a few weeks (or even days) before he is expected to make his vice presidential pick public, McCain is likely testing the waters to see how such a move would be received by the base voters who have long been skeptical about his conservative bona fides," Washingtonpost.com's Chris Cillizza writes.

Some early words: "If he picks a pro-choice running mate, I don't see how he can win this race," Family Research Council President Tony Perkinstells the Washington Times' Stephen Dinan and Ralph Z. Hallow.

Add Dinan and Hallow: "Naming Mr. Ridge also could raise the thorny issue of immigration, because by some measures, immigration enforcement dropped under Mr. Ridge's tenure, only to pick up when his successor, Michael Chertoff, took office."

Contrast McCain's moves with the nuanced way the Democrats are handling their party disagreements over abortion: Some new platform language, and a symbolically significant speaker in Sen. Bobby Casey Jr., D-Pa. -- but it's all being done with the cooperation (or, at least, without the vocal objections) of the major interest groups.

"The Democratic Party is planning a convention designed to soften the edges on the party's support for abortion rights, with a revamped platform and a speaking lineup that reinforces efforts to broaden Democrats' appeal on the hot-button issue," per ABC News.

Now that the base is coming home, does McCain want to be making the kind of noise that might drive them out of the house?

"With less than two weeks to go before the start of the presidential nominating conventions, Barack Obama's lead over John McCain has disappeared," per the write-up of the new Pew Research Center poll. "McCain is garnering more support from his base -- including Republicans and white evangelical Protestants -- than he was in June, and he also has steadily gained backing from white working class voters over this period."

Another provocation from McCain (and what does it say that he still doesn't have this answer down pat?): "Ignoring the warnings that Social Security can derail political careers, Senator John McCain has infuriated his party's right wing by saying that 'everything has to be on the table' in discussions about keeping Social Security solvent," Larry Rohter writes in The New York Times.

"In the space of one week, he opened the door to an increase in Social Security taxes, denied he would raise payroll taxes and then, through an ally, called a tax increase a 'dumb idea,' " Rohter writes. "He has also sowed confusion about whether he favors privatizing Social Security, or continuing with the current system."

(The DNC on Thursday offers a happy 73rd birthday to Social Security -- yes, it's older than McCain -- with a new Web video featuring James Roosevelt Jr., FDR's grandson. "Like President Bush, [McCain] wants to privatize our Social Security," Roosevelt says in the video.)

(At RNC headquarters, they're ready to receive the DNC's birthday cake delivery by giving leis in return -- the better to welcome their candidate back to the contiguous 48.)

(In case you're scoring at home: "Combined with Saturday's round, Obama has spent close to 12 hours on the links while in Hawaii," per the Honolulu Advertiser.)

McCain continues to press his advantage on foreign policy. He's sending Lieberman and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to Georgia. (Wondering out loud here: If Obama dispatched a few top surrogates to monitor a war zone on his behalf, how long before a Republican would be on TV calling him "presumptuous"?)

"It was all part of a continuing effort by the McCain campaign to seize on the events overseas to appear presidential and in command on the world stage while at the same time not appearing to be political," The New York Times' Katharine Q. Seelye reports. "At several points today, he emphasized that he had visited Georgia many times and was familiar with the players."

"This does have echoes of the cold war," ABC's George Stephanopoulos reported on "Good Morning America" Thursday. "It ends up, I believe, helping in the short run John McCain. He has been somewhat prescient on this issue. . . . Barack Obama is playing it a little more safe."

McCain writes an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal Thursday: "The world has learned at great cost the price of allowing aggression against free nations to go unchecked. A cease-fire that holds is a vital first step, but only one. With our allies, we now must stand in united purpose to persuade the Russian government to end violence permanently and withdraw its troops from Georgia. International monitors must gain immediate access to war-torn areas in order to avert an even greater humanitarian disaster, and we should ensure that emergency aid lifted by air and sea is delivered."

Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili lays out the stakes in a Washington Post op-ed: "If the international community allows Russia to crush our democratic, independent state, it will be giving carte blanche to authoritarian governments everywhere. Russia intends to destroy not just a country but an idea."

Here's a big way to blunt McCain's perceived edge on foreign policy/national security: Might Colin Powell be ready to jump? "I do not have time to waste on Bill Kristol's musings," Powell told ABC's Teddy Davis, after Kristol reported on Fox News that Powell was set to speak at the DNC. "I am not going to the convention. I have made this clear."