Now I know we're all settled on overthrowing Barack at Denver and nominating Hillary because of how surprised and unprepared the Republicans would be. It makes sense. After all, polls show she loses more narrowly in Kentucky than Obama. But what if we take the deception a step further and nominate Obama? Think about that: nominating the candidate without substantial debt who wasn't for the war before they were against it, doesn't pander to us with gimmicky policies like gas tax holidays, and runs strong in a variety of states rather than hoping for a triple bank shot in Florida. The Democrats nominating someone like that would surprise the hell out of the Republicans.

So I'm not normally a blogger here but while I was reading an article from May 12th about Ron Paul's supporters waging their rebellion, I noticed a reader comment that said the following:

"According to AP, Obama camp has scheduled a meeting with Christie Todd
Whitman, former Gov. NJ, frmr EPA sec. Additionally, the website
obamawhitman2008.com was purchased just yesterday... might be an
interesting wrinkle..."

While reader comments aren't exactly known for reliability (I mean, look at some of the crap *we* write), I decided to look into it because it beats doing actual work. Sure enough, GoDaddy.com lists that the domain obamawhitman2008.com was purchased on May 11th.  The person who registered it was Michael Everts, of Washington DC. Who?

I tracked down a blog by Robert McClellan that had also looked into the GoDaddy listing, and it gave a little more information:

"Barack Obama will pick former NJ Governor and Moderate Republican
Christie Whitman as his running mate. The domain name OBAMAWHITMAN2008
has been registered by longtime DC political activists and Log Cabin
Republican Michael Everts, a Whitman insider.
You heard it here first!"

I'm less convinced than Mr. McClellan about this ticket. Assuming Everts is in fact a "Whitman insider," why would he register the domain and not some anonymous Obama staffer? Many other Obama(VP Candidate's last name)2008.coms are registered as well, though not as recently. In the case of ObamaWebb2008.com, someone registered it, made an American flag graphic with their two names on it, and then wrote "Think about it!" underneath. I think the act of registering these domains is often just the work of an idle fan.

Anyway, while trying to track down the other part of the reader post - the supposed meeting with Whitman and Obama, I found that the same reader comment had been pasted in numerous other articles on different websites in the past day. Apparently some web monkey is really intent on pushing that rumor.

Regardless of whether it's true, it's an interesting "unity ticket" rumor and one I haven't heard a word of discussion on. She's a female moderate Republican who's critical of the Bush administration and has experience as a governor and former head of the EPA. Her statement to New Yorkers that the air in downtown Manhattan was clean after the Towers collapsed is a controversial issue that would dog her, though. It's not as far in the past as you think; the 2nd Court of Appeals ruled only a few weeks ago that she wouldn't be held liable for the misleading statement. She doesn't bring any sort of geographic strength to a presidential ticket, either, but how often do veeps actually help carry a state anyway?

Like I said though, I hadn't heard any discussion of her as a possible VP pick (for Obama or even for McCain) and I don't know that much about her. What do you think about even the remote possibility of her as VP?